Towards a Ius Commune 3.0?!
| Author | Ivo Giesen |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X1302000201 |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
20 MJ 2 (2013) 159
EDITORIAL
TOWARDS A IUS COMMUNE 3.0?!
I G*
“In the light of these develop ments, I submit that a new ius commune for Euro pe is taking shape
before our eyes. We see it, but we are not c ompletely aware of it.”
T. Ko opma ns1
§1. INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS A IUS COMMUNE 3.0?
ere are certain periods in a person’s life in which one feels the need to contemplate
some what on li fe as it has unr avel led so far. Caug ht in s uch a moment , wa nder ing b ack to
my early days in legal resea rch, I started reminiscing about the old computer program s
that were used back then, especia lly the text-writing programs. In those days, the mid-
nineties of the previous century, all legal researchers seemed to use WordPerfect 5.0
and 5.1, followi ng up on the older WordPerfect 4.2 which later became WordPerfect 6 .0,
and so on. Each new version of this program, with the accompanying higher number,
promised and delivered a more modern and a bet ter version. Nowadays we see the same,
for example, in the market for mobile phones; the iPhone 3 soon became the iPhone 4,
then became the i Phone 4G, a nd has now become the iPhone 5.
Much along the same lines, I would like to propose here that the lega l research
tradition within Europe that has engaged i n the development of a European legal
scholarship, a modern ius commune – such as the legal resea rchers who have combined
their e orts in the Maastricht based Ius Commune Research School – should strive to
work on and work towards a ‘ius commune 3.0’ as t he upgraded, moderni zed version
of the original ius commune tradition, which is the h istorical backbone of the currently
* Ivo Giesen is Professor of Pr ivate Law at Utrecht Scho ol of Law, Molengraa Institute for Pr ivate
Law, and Program me Director of the Research Cent re UCALL (Utrecht Centre for Accountabilit y and
Liability Law). is text is an adapted ve rsion of the author’s key note lecture at t he 2012 Ius Commune
Conference (Amsterdam, the Net herlands). e argu ment developed here was original ly addressed to
the researcher s of the Ius Commune Research S chool but has been broadened for th is contribution; the
style and cha racteristics of the ora l lecture have been retained howe ver. Many thanks to Maar tje Bijl
and Lonneke Steve ns for discussing th is topic, and to Willem va n Boom for preliminar y comments on
a rst dra . e u sual disclaime r applies.
1 T. Koopmans, ‘Towards a new “ius c ommune”’, in B. de Witte and C. Forder (eds.), e Common Law
of Europe and the Future of Le gal Education (Kluwer Law I nternational, e Hagu e 1992), p.49.
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