Book Review: Towards a European Legal Culture
| Author | Norbert Reich |
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X1402100311 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
576 21 MJ 3 (2014)
BOOK REVIEWS
Geneviève Helleringer and K ai Purnhagen (eds.), Towards a European Legal Culture,
Beck-Hart-Nomos, 2014, 395 pp., hardback, €149,00, ISBN 9781–84946–491–8
‘Towards a European Legal Cult ure’ – have I read the title correctly? No question mark?
What are the editors, t he 20 authors, and Stefan Vogenauer who has written a short
foreword talking about?
– Towards? Something to come in the futu re, with indications already at present?
– European? EU? Comparative ex periences from the many Europe an jurisdict ions?
United in diversity? Diverse in the ction of striv ing for unity?
– Lega l? All areas of law? Or mostly const itutional aspect s? Civil law? Or something
else? CJEU practice? European l awyering?
– Culture? Not ‘Cultures’? Civ ilization? Common principles? History and trad ition?
A seemingly big enterprise – w ith many interesting papers, but unfortunately al so with
rather confusing a nd fuzzy result s. Some authors cope with thi s over-complexity and
seeming obviousness of t he topic, and some do it in rather personal a nd subjective
ways. A coherent line of study and arg ument seems to be missing , as the foreword by
Vogenauer implies. I will just take out some ex amples without giving a complete picture
– which would be impossible in a short rev iew anyhow.
In their preface, the editors give a n overview ‘On the Terms, Relevance and Impact
of a European Legal Cu lture’ (p. 3–16). e authors point to the t wo sides of a European
legal culture: plura lism vs. unity (p. 4). ey continue with an overview of the di erent
and di ering contributions to this volume under the head ings of the following par ts –
useful reading for t he hasty researcher.
Part I is entitled: ‘L aw and Culture – Two Uneasy Bedfellows’. It starts with a paper
by Martijn Hesselink on ‘ e New European Legal Cult ure – Ten Years On’ (p. 17–24)
where he brie y takes stock of the changes since the publ ication of his book in 20 01. In
his view, the origina lly found changes from formalism to a more substance -oriented and
pragmatic approach to private law have to some extent been supplemented by again more
formal approaches. is is supposed to be witnessed by the CFR Process (p. 21) striving
at a more coherent Europea n private law. In my opinion, such d i erentiat ions are highly
speculative and depend rather on prioritie s of the (EU) legislator or expert committee (of
which Martijn Hesseli nk was a member), not on di erent lega l cultures.
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