Annual Report 2018-2019 Contents
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Institute of European and Comparative Law Annual Report 2018-2019 Contents (click on link) Director’s Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Staff ............................................................................................................................................................... 4 Staff Biographies and Activities .................................................................................................................. 6 Visitors to the Institute .............................................................................................................................. 43 Law with Law Studies in Europe and the European Exchange Programme ......................................... 48 The 11th Oxford French Law Moot ............................................................................................................ 51 Conferences and Seminars ........................................................................................................................ 53 International Institutional Links: Reports from Recent Participants ................................................... 68 Studies of the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law ....................................................... 71 Financial Supporters ................................................................................................................................. 72 Governance ................................................................................................................................................ 73 Director’s Introduction e live in turbulent political times. I waited to the last possible moment to write this Introduction to my first Report as Director of the Institute of European and WComparative Law (IECL). The reason is that I found it impossible to do so without saying something about the impact of ‘Brexit’ on the Institute, our people and our work. When I started typing these words yesterday, the UK was still officially due to leave the European Union at the end of October. Today, on 28 October, it looks as though membership will be extended for up to three months, but we have little idea what the country’s position will be at the start of December, January or February. Under the circumstances, I will begin by giving the reader an overview of our ongoing work before turning to the challenges of ‘Brexit’. Looking back over the past year For our Report spanning the past academic year 2018-2019, we have chosen a cover intended to represent the two different strands of the Institute’s activities: on the one hand, in-depth academic engagement with the law governing and emanating from the European Union, and on the other, the comparative study of different (national) legal systems either generally or with regard to particular questions. We have included flags from all over the world, EU member states, non-member states and non-European countries – in this case the twenty-one countries from which we hosted visitors – to emphasise the fact that the remit of our comparative work is not confined to European or EU legal orders. In October last year, I had the good fortune of taking over the Directorship of this vibrant, multi-faceted research and teaching ‘hub’ from John Cartwright, who retired at the end of 2018. Speaking both for myself and the whole Institute, I would like to thank John for everything he has done during his three years as Director. That the Institute is thriving as it is today is in no small measure down to his vision and tireless effort in building and maintaining external links while at the same time promoting the IECL’s close internal integration within the Oxford Law Faculty. We are continuing on this path by fostering strong ties with our international partner institutions, welcoming visitors from all over the world, and providing numerous fora for academic exchange with other parts of the Faculty. At the heart of all our activities are the people who shape the Institute through their contributions, academic interests and especially their interaction. We differ from many other institutions in that our core of full-time staff is relatively small; yet this core is buttressed by many others who are involved, for longer or shorter periods, in different roles and fulfilling different functions (see John Cartwright’s Introduction to the Annual Report 2017-2018). In October 2018, Jenny Dix, the IECL’s administrator, our ‘good soul’ and hitherto only full-time member of staff was officially joined by two permanent lecturers – one in French law and one in German law – responsible for preparing our students going to France and Germany (respectively) for their year abroad. We were very pleased to have been able to appoint Geneviève Helleringer, who had already been with us for some years, as IECL Lecturer in French Law and Business Law (see p. 28). The Erich Brost Lectureship in German Law and European Union Law was held by Jan Zglinski during 2018-2019 (see p. 41). Jan left Oxford in September to take up an Assistant Professorship at the London School of Economics. While we were sad to see him go after only one year in post, we are delighted to have found an excellent successor: Johannes Ungerer, previously at the University of Bonn, joined us as the new Brost Lecturer at the start of the current academic year. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Johannes very warmly to the IECL. We also have a number of new Research Fellows and Visiting Research Fellows who were appointed during 2018-2019: John Cartwright thus remains closely affiliated to us (see p. 14); the others are Fabiana Bettini (see p. 9), Stefan Enchelmaier (see p. 20), Wolfgang Ernst (see p. 22), Ciara Kennefick (see p. 31), and Andreas von Goldbeck (see p. 26). Our Stockholm Centre Oxford Fellow for the year was Mark Klamberg (see p. 32); and under our regular exchange programmes we welcomed Konrad Duden and Andreas Humm from the Max Planck Institute of Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg (see p. 69), Bertrand Fages from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Carmen Márquez Carrasco from the University of Seville, and Georgy Mordokhov from Lomonosov Moscow State University. Olga Giakouminaki and Liane Huttner were our Maison Française Visiting Doctoral Students (see p. 46). Our general visitor programme, too, was again extremely popular, and although we do not have a designated programme for visiting graduate students, we occasionally manage to host a few where there are special reasons for attaching them to the IECL. It was a great pleasure to have with us, for periods usually ranging between one and six months, guests from Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK. One way in which we try to build a vibrant and cohesive community between academics who are often here for only a limited amount of time and who work on a vast array of different topics is by offering visitors the opportunity to present and discuss aspects of their research with each other and the Oxford Faculty more widely at our regular IECL Lunchtime Seminars. Together with the Comparative Law Discussion Group and the EU Law Discussion Group, the IECL Lunchtime Seminars account for a total of usually two or three events per week taking place under our roof during term time; and this year they were so successful and sought-after that we let them run on well into the summer break (please see the overview of topics at p. 64 et seq.). As in previous years, we hosted or were involved in a number of events on a broad range of topics (see the detailed reports at p. 53 et seq.), including a two-day conference assessing the impact of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights at the national level (this event was run jointly with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights), a two-day author workshop considering remedies for contractual non-performance in comparative perspective, and a two-day antitrust enforcement symposium. Another particular highlight was the visit by Professor Guido Alpa from Sapienza University of Rome, a longstanding friend and supporter of the Institute, who came to give a special guest seminar in May. Taking as his starting point the various conceptions and definitions of contract that can be found in European legal orders, he shared with us some reflections on comparative law in Europe and the evolution of European Private Law. We are further delighted to report that the annual Oxford French Law Moot this year ended in a victory for the home team, which had been expertly coached by our two Maison Française visiting graduate students Liane and Olga. Brexit It is unavoidable that in Oxford’s international environment the prospect of Brexit looms large. Often, it is the elephant in the room. There are tricky questions about whether (and how) it is possible – or even appropriate – for academics to remain politically ‘neutral’ on 2 matters of such fundamental significance to our constitutional and economic order, particularly when the relevant legal questions fall directly into our own fields of expertise. Readers will not be surprised to know that there are strongly held views at an Institute devoted (in one main part) to the study of EU law and the European legal order. As an academic institution, we have tried to tackle the elephant in the way