Eric Descheemaeker, THE DIVISION OF WRONGS: A HISTORICAL COMPARATIVE STUDY Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2009. xxv + 300 pp. ISBN 9780199562794. £50.
| Pages | 339-341 |
| Published date | 01 May 2010 |
| Date | 01 May 2010 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2010.0016 |
| Author | Martin Hogg |
English language legal scholarship has been blessed over the past two decades or so by the publication of a number of works which have added greatly to the understanding of the development of European private law and which stand out as superb examples of such scholarship: Reinhard Zimmermann's
Within the law of obligations, delict has suffered from a relative dearth of recent structural scholarship. Contract has of course been the subject of much analysis, as well as of new model law (most recently in the draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR)). Unjustified enrichment, as a notoriously neglected obligation, benefited from a burst of academic interest from the 1980s onwards. Delict has lagged behind, though there have been occasional scholarly forays, such as Birks's essay on the nature of civil wrongs in David Owen (ed),
Descheemaeker does not offer a comprehensive review of European delict. Instead he focuses on why the law of wrongs of three systems – Roman law, French law, and English law – is structured in the way it is. The focus of study is, for Roman law on the period from Gaius to the Justinianic consolidation, for French law from Pothier onwards, and for England largely on the period since the eighteenth century, though there is a useful review of the medieval system of actions that so marked (or as might be said, hampered) later conceptual development. Some may argue that the scope of the work is unduly restrictive, yet Descheemaeker provides a perfectly sound justification for his selection: the Gaian-Justinianic model of Roman law remains the touchstone for European legal understanding of...
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