It is the purpose of the paper to shed light on the question to what extent there is a need for a unified contract law in the European Union. The paper outlines a concept of constitutional uncertainty in international trade and presents a model of international transactions in the presence of a...

Contract law has one overarching goal: to advance the legitimate interests of the contracting parties. For the most part, scholars, judges, and parties embrace this party primacy norm, recognizing only a few exceptions, such as mandatory rules that bar enforcement of agreements that harm others....

Regulatory competition in contract law has become a popular topic in recent years. The focus of the debate, however, has been whether regulators actually compete for application of their contract laws. In contrast, the question under which conditions this competition – if it exists – might...

From a law-and-economics perspective, the European Commission's proposal for the introduction of an optional Common European Sales Law (CESL) has been criticized for over-regulating consumer sales law in Europe and for being likely to yield more costs than benefits. In defense of CESL, it is...

The Common European Sales Law (CESL) is the Commission's most recent policy initiative for European contract law. It aims to address the problem that differences between the national contract laws of the Member States may constitute an obstacle for the European Internal Market. This paper...

A clear trend is evolving as more and more banks and other financial institutions are being successfully sued before the civil courts of the Netherlands for breaches of their special duty of care (‘bijzondere zorgplicht'). Whereas it was initially mainly banks that had reason to worry about...