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 that befits our role: by assessing developments from the ‘expert’ angle and by facilitating open discourse about them. When we still assumed that the UK would leave the EU on 29 March, for example, we scheduled for the nearest possible date – Friday of 8th week in Hilary Term – an afternoon symposium on ‘Brexit and the EU’ (see p. 56). We were fortunate that so many eminent scholars and practitioners accepted our invitation to help shed some calm and distinctly non- populist light on both the big picture and the nitty-gritty details of the first unratified Withdrawal Agreement. And while we cannot hold such events on a near weekly basis (as the emerging situation would now seem to require), we plan to continue accompanying the Brexit process in this good academic fashion.
The prolonged uncertainty over Brexit exercises us not merely as scholars, but it affects us in very immediate institutional and personal terms as well. After 29 March and 12 April, 31 October was to be the third envisaged exit day. How ‘hard’ Brexit would be was unclear, and at this point we can only speculate on what short- and medium-term challenges are in store for us when exit day actually arrives. Many readers will be aware that the IECL administers the Law Faculty’s hugely successful student exchanges with universities in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain (‘Course 2’ – see p. 48). We have a cohort abroad at the moment and were pleased to welcome to Oxford at the beginning of October incoming students from each of our partners. All our exchanges are currently implemented under the roof of the Erasmus+ framework. Losing access to this programme would have significant financial implications, both for the Faculty and the students we send out and receive every year. We are committed to doing everything in our power to maintain the existing exchanges and to keep them running smoothly; yet we find ourselves constantly trying to plan for contingencies that are almost impossible to foresee.
To end on a brighter note: overall, the prospect of Brexit has brought home to us how much we value being an integral part of a close-knit international network of academic institutions, scholars and colleagues who often also become friends. This is one reason why we are redoubling our efforts to foster the already vibrant visitor programme and to build ever closer links with institutions and colleagues abroad. If and when EU law becomes a ‘foreign’ legal order, we at the IECL are at any rate well-placed to continue studying it as a new and special field of comparative law.
I very much hope that, in a year’s time, I will be able to report that everything is sorted and that, in retrospect, the whole process has been a ‘piece of cake’.
Birke Häcker 28 October 2019
3 Staff
Academic Staff
Professor Birke Häcker, Professor of Comparative Law and Director of the Institute
Professor Jeremias Adams-Prassl, Academic Director of Undergraduate Exchange Programmes and Deputy Director of the Institute Professor Ariel Ezrachi, Slaughter and May Professor of Competition Law, Director of the Centre for Competition Law and Policy and Deputy Director of the Institute Professor Stephen Weatherill, Jacques Delors Professor of European Law and Deputy Director of the Institute
Professor Ulf Bernitz, Research Fellow, Co-ordinator of the Oxford-Stockholm Collaboration Dr Konrad Duden, Max Planck Gildesgame Fellow, Michaelmas Term 2018 Professor Bertrand Fages, Paris Visiting Fellow 2019 Dr Geneviève Helleringer, IECL Lecturer in French Law and Business Law Andreas Humm, Max Planck Gildesgame Fellow, Hilary Term 2019 Dr Mark Klamberg, Stockholm Centre Oxford Fellow, 2018-19 Dr Javier Garcia Oliva, Tutor in Spanish Law Nello Pasquini, Tutor in Italian Law Dr Jan Zglinski, Erich Brost Lecturer in German Law and EU Law
Research Fellows
Dr Fabiana Bettini (Hulme Postdoctoral Fellow in Land Law at the Law Faculty and Brasenose College) Professor Sanja Bogojevic (Associate Professor of Law and Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall) Professor John Cartwright (Emeritus Professor of the Law of Contract and Emeritus Fellow of Christ Church) Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart (Professor of the Law of Contract and Fellow of Merton College) Professor Matthew Dyson (Associate Professor of Law and Fellow of Corpus Christi College) Professor Stefan Enchelmaier (Professor of European and Comparative Law and Fellow of Lincoln College) Professor Luca Enriques (Professor of Corporate Law and Fellow of Jesus College) Professor Wolfgang Ernst (Regius Professor of Civil Law and Fellow of All Souls College) Professor Mark Freedland (Emeritus Professor of Employment Law and Emeritus Fellow of St John’s College) Professor Ciara Kennefick (Associate Professor of Law and Fellow of Christ Church) Professor Dorota Leczykiewicz (Associate Professor of Law and Fellow of St Peter’s College) Professor Justine Pila (Associate Professor of Law and Fellow of St Catherine’s College)
4 Professor Simon Whittaker (Professor of European Comparative Law and Fellow of St John’s College)
Visiting Research Fellows
Professor Hugh Beale (Emeritus Professor, University of Warwick and Visiting Professor in the Oxford Law Faculty) Professor Anthony Bradley QC (Hon) (Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Edinburgh) Rachel Brandenburger (Hogan Lovells) Professor Alexandra Braun (Lord President Reid Chair of Law, University of Edinburgh) Professor Gerhard Dannemann (Professor of English Law, British Economy and Politics, Humboldt University, Berlin) Professor Eric Descheemaeker (Professor, University of Melbourne) Professor Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson (Conseillère d’Etat and Professor of Private Law, Panthéon-Assas University) Dr Andreas von Goldbeck (Lecturer, University of Stockholm) Professor Martijn Hesselink (Professor of Transnational Law and Theory, European University Institute) Professor Rodrigo Momberg Uribe (Professor of Civil Law, Catholic University of Valparaíso) Professor Juan Pablo Murga Fernández (Senior Lecturer, University of Seville) Conor Quigley QC (Serle Court Chambers) Professor Wolf-Georg Ringe (University of Hamburg and Visiting Professor in the Oxford Law Faculty) Professor Katja Ziegler (Sir Robert Jennings Professor of International Law, University of Leicester)
Administrator
Jenny Dix
5 Staff Biographies and Activities
Jeremias Adams-Prassl is Professor of Law and Fellow of Magdalen College. He is the Academic Director of the Undergraduate Exchange Programmes and Deputy Director at the Institute.
Jeremias continues to work in the fields of English and European law, with a particular interest in technology, innovation policy, and the future of work. His most recent book, Humans as a Service (Oxford University Press, 2018), explores the promise and perils of work in the gig economy across the world, and was awarded the 2019 St Petersburg Private Law Prize. Jeremias’ research on innovation policy and labour market regulation is frequently drawn on by governments and international organisations, and has been cited by courts, policy documents, and news organisations in multiple jurisdictions. Since the autumn of 2018, he has also been a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Social Contract.
Together with Professor Abi Adams-Prassl of the Oxford Department of Economics, Jeremias also writes on the law and economics of fragmenting labour markets and access to justice. Jointly with John Armour (PI), Rebecca Williams, and others, they have recently embarked on a £1.2m grant exploring the potential of AI for English Law – a project to which Jeremias is contributing both doctrinal and broader comparative perspectives.
Jeremias continues to lecture extensively, speaking at academic conferences, governmental meetings, and international organisations, including the European Commission, OECD, and the ILO. This included a panel discussion for the government of the UAE comparing the impact of digitalisation on the future of work across different jurisdiction, and a keynote at the Belgian Government’s launch of the ILO Centenary Report.
Selected publications:
Humans as a Service: the Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy (Paperback, Oxford University Press, 2019)
(with Auriane Lamine) “Collective Autonomy for On-Demand Workers? Normative Arguments, Current Practices and Legal Ways Forward” (2018) 99 Bulletin of Comparative Labour Relations, 269
“The Gig Economy before the Court of Justice: from Digital Service Provision to Work Intermediation”, in O. Deinert, J. Heuschmid, M. Kittner, M. Schmidt (eds) Demokratisierung der Wirtschaft durch Arbeitsrecht: Festschrift Thomas Klebe (Bund Verlag, 2018), 308
(with Martin Risak) “Working in the Gig Economy – Flexibility Without Security?”, in R. Singer and T. Bazzani (eds) European Employment Policies: Current Challenges (Berliner Juristische Universitätsschriften – Zivilrecht Band 76, 2018), 68-98
Other activities:
In March 2019, Jeremias co-hosted (with Advocated General Michal Bobek) a conference exploring the impact of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights across the Member States at the Bonavero Institute, with the joint support of the IECL and the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (see below, p. 57).
6 Hugh Beale is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Warwick, Visiting Professor at the Oxford Law Faculty, Senior Research Fellow at the Commercial Law Centre at Harris Manchester College and Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute. In 2018-19 his principal contributions to European and/or comparative law have been:
1. (with B. Fauvarque-Cosson, J. Rutgers and S. Vogenauer) the completion and publication of the third edition of Ius Commune Casebooks for the Common Law of Europe: Cases, Materials and Text on Contract Law (Hart, 2019), which is a combination of European and comparative contract law;
2. (with B. Häcker) the organisation of a new series of books, Contract Law in a Comparative Context, to be published by Intersentia. Authors from different jurisdictions (in the first tranche, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden) are writing an account of their national contract laws. Each book will be a free-standing account of the national law, but the authors will use a common structure so that the reader should be able to compare the laws by ‘reading across’ the different books (see further below, p. 59).
Selected publications:
“Primacy of the Contract Document in English Contract Law” [2019] 1 IWRZ [Zeitschrift für Internationales Wirtschaftrecht], 28-34
“Earnest Money and Deposits” in Le Parole Del Diritto: Scritti in Onore di Carlo Castronovo (Jovene Editore, 2018), II, 621-638
Selected lectures, staff seminars and conference presentations:
“Brexit and intertemporal private law: financial services contracts and Brexit”, Bayreuth (2018)
“Civil law, common law and the principles of European contract law” and “Restitution after failed contracts in English Law”, Carlos II University Madrid (October 2018)
“Challenges facing national and transnational contract law”, National University of Taiwan, Tsai Wan-Tsai Chair Lecture (November 2018)
Roundtable, “The making of European private law in a digital era: obligations”, University of Trento (May 2019)
Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia V: Ending and changing contracts, “Comparative summary”, National University of Singapore (September 2019)
Other activities:
Taught courses and gave student lectures at the National Taiwan University (November 2018), City University, Hong Kong (January 2019), and the University of Trento (May 2019)
Autonomous University of Madrid: selection panel for Intertalentum Postdoctoral awards
Member of Council, European Law Institute (until September 2019)
7 Ulf Bernitz is co-ordinator of the Stockholm-Oxford Collaboration, and in this capacity he has been a member of the Institute since 2001. He is Professor of European Law at Stockholm University and Visiting Professor at Örebro University.
Selected publications:
Standard Contract Law (Standardavtalsrätt, in Swedish), 9th Edition (Norstedts Juridik Publishing, 2018), 288 pp.
Swedish and European Market Law 1. Competition Law (Svensk och europeisk marknadsrätt 1, in Swedish) 5th Edition (Norstedts Juridik Publishing, 2019), 249 pp.
“Nordic Law: Position and Possibilities” (2018) JFT (journal published by the Finnish Law Society), p. 385 ff.
“Introduction”, in U. Bernitz and S. de Vries (eds) General Principles of EU Law and the EU Digital Order (Kluwer International, 2019)
8 Fabiana Bettini is the Hulme Postdoctoral Fellow in Land Law at the Faculty of Law and Brasenose College since November 2018. She joined the Institute as a Research Fellow in February 2019.
Her research interest primarily lies in the field of comparative property law and focuses on property institutions and doctrines across different jurisdictions (England, United States, France and Italy). Her most recent publication in the Modern Studies in Property Law series compares the institution of the lease as used in England and France for achieving housing affordability goals. Currently, Fabiana is working on a paper which discusses the latest judicial developments of the law of servitudes in England and France. A draft version of this paper was presented at the workshop ‘New Work in Property and Trusts’ held at University College London in May 2019. On a related topic, Fabiana presented a report on conservation easements and covenants in the United States and England in the framework of the GIP project ‘L’échelle de communalité’, headed by Professor Judith Rochfeld (Sorbonne University, Paris).
Fabiana’s research interest also focuses on multi-owned housing across different legal systems. From March 2019 Fabiana is leading (with Professor Susan Bright, Oxford) the project ‘Exploring the Collective in Multi-Owned Housing’. By relying on empirical research methods, the project investigates how leaseholders living in English blocks of flats and cohousing developments think about ownership and share the management of these sites. The methodological aspects of this project were discussed in May 2019 at the Empirical and Socio-Legal Methods Workshop, Oxford. Fabiana has also participated in a project sponsored by the Italian Federation of Public Housing (Federcasa), which ended in July 2019. The results of her work on affordable housing models in France, Belgium and England will appear as a chapter in the book La Casa per tutti. Teorie sull’housing e pratiche di comunità.
Selected publications:
“Long Leases and Affordable Housing: a Comparative Analysis of French and English Law', in B. McFarlane and S. Agnew (eds) Modern Studies in Property Law (Hart Publishing, 2019), Chapter 13
“Community-led Housing: Modelli Alternativi di Abitare nel Panorama Europeo ed Internazionale', in C. Iaione (ed) La Casa per tutti. Teorie sull’housing e pratiche di comunità (Il Mulino, 2019)
Selected presentations:
“Rapport de droit comparé – Les conservation easements dans les pays de common law”, GIP project ‘L’échelle de communalité - Le(s) bien(s) commun(s)’, IRJS, Paris (15 March 2019)
“The Numerus Clausus Principle and the law of servitudes: a comparison between English and French law”, ‘New Work in Property and Trusts’ Workshop, UCL, London (1 May 2019)
“Exploring the collective in multi-owned housing”, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford (10 May 2019)
9 Sanja Bogojević is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and Research Fellow at the Institute.
This academic year has been spent mainly focusing on completing a research project on EU public procurement law together with colleagues from Lund University, Sweden. This involved editing the final pieces of the manuscript entitled Discretion in EU Public Procurement Law. She also completed a journal article where she analysed the role of environmental law from the prism of enlargement.
Selected publications:
(with Xavier Groussot and Jörgen Hettne) (eds) Discretion in EU Public Procurement Law (Hart Publishing, 2019)
“Mapping Discretionary Space in EU Public Procurement Law: the Case of Environmental Protection as Discretion”, in Bogojević, Groussot and Hettne (eds) supra, 161-188
(with Xavier Groussot and Jörgen Hettne) “The Age of Discretion: Understanding the Scope and Limits of Discretion in EU Public Procurement Law” (Chapter 1) and “Where the Future Lies: a New Age of Proportionality?” (Chapter 12), in Bogojević, Groussot and Hettne (eds) supra
(with Mirjana Drenovak-Ivanović) “Environmental Law through the Prism of Enlargement: Time for Reflection” (2019) 56 Common Market Law Review, 949-978
Selected presentations:
“Participation in EU climate change law”, workshop on ‘Appraising the EU’s 2030 Climate and Energy Policy Framework’, University of Helsinki (8-9 July 2019)
Presented and co-organised a workshop on ‘The Legal Complexities along the Belt and Road Initiative” at Lund Law Faculty (sponsored by The Swedish Network for European Legal Studies) (3 May 2019)
Other activities:
Co-editor of the Analysis Section for the Journal of Environmental Law
10 Anthony Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Edinburgh; Barrister, QC (Hon). He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
Having a longstanding interest in the UK's constitutional structure, he is a close observer of current developments in the public law jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, in the protection of European human rights in the UK, and in the growth of comparative constitutional law. Being based in Oxford, he is always pleased to meet visitors to the Institute who are working in these fields.
11 Rachel Brandenburger has been a Visiting Research Fellow of the Institute since October 2017. She is also a Visiting Law Fellow at St Hilda’s College.
She has created and teaches seminars on “The Global Dimension of Competition Law Enforcement” in conjunction with Professor Ezrachi’s course on competition law for BCL/MJur/MSc in Law and Finance students. In 2019, she was appointed the editor in charge of a new Agency Insight section of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement (JAE). To date, the Chairman of the Japan Fair Trade Commission, the President of the French Autorité de la concurrence and the Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have each contributed articles to JAE.
Rachel’s other activities in 2018/19 included speaking on “Competition Law and Policy and International Cooperation During and Post Brexit” at the IECL’s symposium on “Brexit and the EU - Challenges under the Withdrawal Agreement and Beyond” (see below, p. 56); presenting a draft paper on “International Antitrust Cooperation in the Post-Globalized World” at the Centre for Competition Law and Policy’s Antitrust Enforcement Symposium (see below, p. 61); moderating an American Bar Association teleconference entitled “China’s Antitrust Enforcement in Interesting Times: Looking Backward and Forward”; and participating in the first Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Competition Open Day in Paris, the German Bundeskartellamt’s 19th International Conference in Berlin, the Hong Kong Competition Commission’s first Competition Exchange in Hong Kong, the inaugural Compass Lexecon China Summit in Hangzhou, China, the International Competition Network’s 18th Annual Meeting in Cartagena, Columbia and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 18tth Session of the International Group of Experts on Competition Law and Policy in Geneva.
Rachel is recognised as a leading international antitrust and competition law and policy advisor, having practised for over 30 years in Europe and the USA. She has advised board level executives of major global corporations and the senior leadership of antitrust agencies around the world, including the US Department of Justice where she was Special Advisor, International to the Antitrust Division, based in Washington DC from 2010 to 2013. Before that she was a partner for 21 years in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, based in Brussels and London. Since 2014, she has been a senior advisor and foreign legal consultant to Hogan Lovells US LLP.
12 Alexandra Braun holds the Lord President Reid Chair of Law at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Braun is Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at Edinburgh Law School, and Director of the LLM in Comparative and European Private Law. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
She is a Member of the Steering Committee of the Edinburgh Centre for Private Law as well as the new Series Editor of the Edinburgh Studies in Law series published by Edinburgh University Press (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-edinburgh-studies-in-law.html). During the academic year 2018-19 Professor Braun has taught trusts at undergraduate level as well as two graduate courses on ‘Fundamentals of Comparative Private Law’ and ‘Comparative and International Trust Law’.
Professor Braun has broad research interests in comparative law and legal history, in particular in the areas of trusts and succession law. She is also interested in the impact of the transfer of wealth on questions of intergenerational equality and the cultural history of inheritance. Other interests include legal education, the study of the intellectual history of the law, and the development of various forms of legal scholarship and its interaction with, and impact upon, judicial decision-making.
Professor Braun’s research this past academic year has focused primarily on a study of the relationship between the Scottish and the English legal traditions and of how and why Scottish legal ideas have circulated south of the border. Parts of this study are published in a journal article in Current Legal Problems. She has also been working on the completion of a monograph that provides a comparative study of broken promises of an inheritance, to be published with Oxford University Press.
Selected publication:
“The Value of Communication Practices for Comparative Law: Exploring the Relationship between Scotland and England’ [2019] Current Legal Problems, 1
Selected presentations:
“Testamentary promises: wealth transfers behind the scenes”, Hugh J and Frank Tamisiea Lecture in Trusts and Estates, University of Iowa (20 September 2019)
“Erbversprechen und Pflegevermächtnis aus rechtsvergleichender Sicht”, Das neue österreichische Erbrecht aus rechtsvergleichender und praktischer Sicht, University of Innsbruck (24 June 2019)
“Trusts in the family context: some reflections on developments in Italian and Scots law”, Congreso Internacional sobre Patrimonios de Afectación, “Los patrimonios de afectación como instrumento de gestión y trasmisión de riqueza en el ámbito familiar”, University of Santander (15 February 2019)
“The circulation of legal ideas: Scotland South of the Border”, UCL Current Legal Problem Lecture Series 2018-19 (7 February 2019)
‘Broken promises: una nueva mirada sobre la prohibición de pactos sobre sucesión futura en el Derecho Comparado’, Jornadas Nacionales Uruguayas De Derecho Privado, 150 Años Del Código Civil Uruguayo, Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay) (23 November 2018)
13 John Cartwright is Emeritus Professor of Contract Law, Emeritus Fellow of Christ Church and a Research Fellow at the Institute.
His research is in English and comparative private law, with a focus on contract law and property law. His work in comparative law involves in particular the comparison between English law and French (and French-related) systems, but in his work on (national) English law, whenever appropriate he also engages in comparison with the civil law tradition, to help the reader better understand the approach taken by English law. This also reflects the way that he teaches—whether it is teaching Oxford students in core private law subjects (using ideas they learn from Roman law, as well as ideas from modern civil law systems), or teaching civil lawyers about the common law (as he does regularly in France and elsewhere), or—most obviously—in teaching comparative private law as a substantive discipline. During Michaelmas Term 2018 he taught in the Law Faculty the BCL/MJur course on Comparative Contract Law in Europe (with Birke Häcker), as well as tutorials in Christ Church on Roman Law and Contract. He retired from his Faculty and College posts at the end of December, but the Institute has very kindly made him a Research Fellow, so he is still able to engage in his research within the Faculty. In Hilary Term he continued to take part in the seminars on comparative property law for the undergraduate option on Comparative Private Law. He also still teaches courses on English law (from a comparative perspective) at the Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas.
During this year, he gave lectures or seminars, or took part in conferences or other comparative law activities, in Eindhoven, Lille, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Melbourne, Padua, Paris, Seville and Utrecht.
Selected publications:
“Insights From Outside the Common Law”, in D. Campbell and W. Swain (eds) Reimagining Contract Law Pedagogy (Routledge, 2019), 213-227
(with Simon Whittaker) “Introduction to the English Translation”, in F. Ancel and B. Fauvarque-Cosson, Le Nouveau Droit des Contrats: Guide Bilingue à l'Usage des Praticiens (LGDJ, 2019), 431-448
“Information Obligations and Disinformation of Consumers: English Law Report” (contribution to the 20th Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, Fukoaka, 2018), in G. Straetmans (ed) Information Obligations and Disinformation of Consumers (Springer, 2019), 99-130
In addition, a Spanish translation of his book Contract Law: An Introduction to the English Law of Contract for the Civil Lawyer (3rd edn, Hart Publishing, 2016) was published in the series Panoramas de Derecho of the Law Faculty of the University of Seville: the translation was made by Juan Pablo Murga Fernández, a Visiting Research Fellow of the Institute: John Cartwright, Introducción al Derecho Inglés de los Contratos, Spanish translation by J.P. Murga Fernández and edited by F. Capilla Roncero (Thomson Reuters Aranzadi, 2019)
14 Mindy Chen-Wishart is a Professor of the Law of Contract, Tutorial Fellow in Law at Merton College and Research Fellow at the Institute.
She has taught Contract, Restitution, Torts and Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Consumer Protection Law and Introduction to Law in the past and is at present involved in graduate teaching in Philosophical Foundations of the Common Law and Private Law and Fundamental Rights.
Professor Chen-Wishart is leading a large project on the Contract Laws of Asia. It relates to a series of six books on the contract laws of 14 Asian jurisdictions. Volumes I and II are already published with OUP as Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia. Volume III is ready for publication, Volumes IV and V are being edited, and Volume VI is in planning. This, along with the eventual preparation of a Text, Cases and Materials will allow the subject to be taught in law schools. During 2018–19, she was a guest lecturer for a course on ‘Law and Society in Asia’ at the National University of Singapore.
Selected presentations and other activities:
Held a Colloquium for Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia Volume V: Ending and Changing Contracts, at the National University of Singapore
“The path of good faith in the Common Law”, Inaugural Oxford Studies in Private Law Theory conference, London
“Affirmative duties in impaired consent transactions in the Common Law”, workshop on Misleading Silence in Private Law, Melbourne University
“Good faith and relational contracts”, International Private Law Consortium 2019, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
15 Gerhard Dannemann is Professor of English Law, British Economy and Politics at the Centre for British Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
In 2019, he was awarded a substantial three-year grant by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for a research project which aims to evaluate the impact which Francis Mann had on the development of English, German and International Law, based on Mann’s voluminous correspondence which was donated to Humboldt University in 2014. Together with Reiner Schulze (University of Münster), he is editing the first English language commentary of the German Civil Code, the first volume of which is due to be published late in 2019. He also writes on good academic practice. He teaches English Legal System, British Constitutional Law and Political System, English contract and commercial law, comparative contract law and private international law at Humboldt University. He is a co-reporter of the European Law Institute’s project on “Draft Model Rules on Online Intermediary Platforms”. During April 2019, he was a Visiting Fellow at City University, Hong Kong.
Selected publications:
(with Christoph Busch, Hans Schulte-Nölke, Aneta Wiewiórowska-Domagalska and Fryderyk Zoll) (eds) Discussion Draft of a Directive on Online Intermediary Platforms: Commentary (Jagellonian University Press, 2019)
“Comparative Law: Study of Similarities or Differences?”, in M. Reimann and R. Zimmermann (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2019), 390-422
“Juristische Methodenlehre in England” (2019) 83 The Rabel Journal of Comparative and Private International Law, 330-345
(with Christoph König and Franziska Stamm) “The Correspondence of Frederick Alexander Mann” (British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2018) available at https://www.biicl.org/documents/2054_letters_of_fa_mann.pdf
Selected presentations:
“Drafting style and drafting technique in European private law”, Researching European Private Law. Colloquium in Honour of Reiner Schulze’s Seventieth Birthday, Osnabrück (18 October 2018)
“Rechtliche, wirtschaftliche und politische Aspekte von Brexit”, DAAD-Lektoren- Alumniseminar, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park (20 December 2018)
“Brexit: Der Countdown läuft”, Schwarzkopf-Stiftung Junges Europa, Berlin (14 February 2019)
“Francis Mann’s legal work in exile”, conference on ‘The London Moment: Exile Governments, Academics and Activists in Great Britain, 1940-1945’, Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (21 March 2019)
“F.A. Mann: crossing borders between legal systems, academia and legal practice”, Legal Biography Workshop, Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt (3 July 2019) (together with Christoph König)
“Draft model rules on online intermediate platforms”, European Law Institute Annual Conference, Vienna (5 September 2019)
16 Eric Descheemaeker is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne and Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute. Before moving to Australia, he worked in Oxford (2004-09), Bristol (2008-11) and Edinburgh (2011-17).
His main research interest lies in the field of non-contractual obligations and he works on both the Anglo-Commonwealth and the civilian legal history of these subjects. He is also interested in mixed legal systems.
In 2018/19 he co-organised the Melbourne Obligations Group annual conference (December 2018), which brings together scholars from the Asia-Pacific region, and convened a workshop on unjustified enrichment in the Roman-French tradition in Paris (June 2019, papers to be published in Tribonien). He also returned to the Institute (June-August 2019) as part of the Allan Myers exchange programme between the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford.
Selected publications:
“Rationalising Recovery for Emotional Harm in Tort Law” (2018) 134 Law Quarterly Review, 602-26
“Claimant-focused Damages in the Law of Privacy”, in N. Moreham and J. Varuhas (eds) Remedies for Breach of Privacy (Oxford University Press, 2018), 141-161
“Review of James Plunkett, The Duty of Care in Negligence (Oxford, 2018)” (2019) 118 Revue trimestrielle de droit civil, 438-42
Selected presentations:
“La réforme du 10 février 2016 dans une perspective historico-comparative” [“The 2016 reform of French unjustified enrichment in a historical and comparative perspective], Workshop on “L’enrichissement injustifié” [“Unjustified Enrichment”], Institut d’Histoire du Droit, Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas (14 June 2019)
“Siloed thinking in private law”, workshop on ‘Comparative Law in a Changing Legal Environment’, Brasenose College, Oxford (4 February 2019)
“Reflections on the duty of care in negligence”, Obligations Group Annual Conference (Torts), Melbourne Law School (6 December 2018)
17 Konrad Duden was the Max Planck Gildesgame Fellow in the Institute during Michaelmas Term 2018.
His current research focuses on civil law and procedural law. Regarding the latter he is working on a comparison of different modes of selecting judges for high courts. The goal is to identify and reflect on factors of institutional design that could protect the judiciary from political interference. In the area of civil law he is working on a book that looks at challenges posed by the Internet of Things to certain core concepts of contract and property law. Previously, he has worked mainly on international family law. For his PhD he analysed cases of international surrogacy. Since German law prohibits surrogacy and – unlike many laws of countries where surrogacy is permitted – considers the surrogate and her husband to be the parents of the child, the question arises who the parents are if a surrogate carries a child for two German intended parents.
Selected publications:
“Kommentierung des Gesetzes über die Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft (Lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz) und des Gesetzes zum zivilrechtlichen Schutz vor Gewalttaten und Nachstellungen (Gewaltschutzgesetz)”, in F.-J. Säcker et al. (eds) Münchener Kommentar zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch, vol. 9: Familienrecht I, 8th edition (C.H. Beck, forthcoming)
“Der Erfüllungsgerichtsstand bei mehreren Leistungsorten: spezifischer Ortsbezug und planende Vorarbeit (zu öOGH, 28.6.2017 –9 Ob 6/17y, und OLG Innsbruck, 23.11.2016 –4 R 169/16h)” (2019) Praxis des Internationalen Privat-und Verfahrensrechts (IPRax), 262–267
“Die Wahl der Richterinnen und Richter des BVerfG und der obersten Bundesgerichte” (2019) Juristische Schulung (JuS), 859–864
“Familie im Wandel – Vielfalt im Recht”, in C. Küppers and E. Harasta (eds) Familie von morgen – Neue Werte für die Familie(npolitik) (Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2019), 159-171
“Mehr Freiheit wagen im Familienrecht – Freiheit und Verantwortung im Abstammungsrecht”, in A. Dutta and C. Heinze (eds) “Mehr Freiheit wagen” – Beiträge zur Emeritierung von Jürgen Basedow (Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 89-109
“Kommentierung von §§ 107-111 BGB”, in B. Gsell et al. (eds) beck- online.GROSSKOMMENTAR (C.H. Beck, 2018)
18 Matthew Dyson is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, Tutorial Fellow at Corpus Christi College and Research Fellow at the Institute.
The 2018-19 year began with the launch of The Limits of Criminal Law (Intersentia, 2018), an advanced research text on where the criminal law ends and other areas of law begin, comparing English and German law; it has also been used as the core text for a new third year undergraduate advanced criminal law course in Oxford. The book was the result of a project with a colleague at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, strengthening the historic connection between our two institutions and showcasing Oxford’s strength in criminal law. A new strand has been commenting on reform proposals for civil and criminal codes around the world: a workshop in Oxford led by Simon Whittaker and Jean-Sébastien Borghetti on the proposals for reform of the French civil code provisions on extracontractual liability; a conference in Brussels on the new Belgian Civil Code Draft; a conference in London on the new draft Chilean Criminal Code. He was also lucky enough to spend a week teaching a course as a visiting Professor at the University of Lisbon on the comparative and historical mechanics of legal development. His overarching project this year has been on a monograph comparing 10 different legal systems’ developments in the relationship between civil and criminal law, since around 1850.
Selected publications:
“Comparative Legal History: Methodology for Morphology”, in O. Moréteau et al. (eds) Edward Elgar Handbook of Comparative Legal History (2019), Chapter 4
(with Benjamin Vogel) (eds) The Limits of Criminal Law (Intersentia, 2018)
“Overlap, Separation and Hybridity Across Tort and Crime”, in Dyson and Vogel (eds) supra, Chapter 5
(with Benjamin Vogel) “Introduction”; “Core Principles Compared: the Law’s Identity between Substance and Procedure” (Chapter 4); “Crime and Tort Compared: the Place of Civil Liability” (Chapter 7); “Crime and Medical Compared: Between Autonomy and Public Interest” (Chapter 10); “Crime and Regulation Compared: the Limits of Criminalisation” (Chapter 13); “Administrative Sanctions Compared: the Limits of Executive Enforcement” (Chapter 16); “Alternative Enforcement Compared: Between Punishment and Prevention” (Chapter 19); “Counter-Terrorism Compared: the Limits of Fair Attribution” (Chapter 22); “Crime and Intelligence Compared: Secrecy and the Limits of a Fair Trial” (Chapter 25); “Reflections on Criminal Law in England and Germany” (Chapter 26), in Dyson and Vogel (eds) supra
Selected presentations:
“Criminal legal reasoning in England and Germany”, Anglo-German Dialogue in Criminal Law Biannual Seminar, Rutgers University (9 September 2019)
“The centre of tort”, SLS Annual Conference, UCLAN (4 September 2019)
“Roundtable about law”, symposium in honour of Professor John Bell, University of Cambridge (20 September 2019)
19 Stefan Enchelmaier is Professor of European and Comparative Law, Fellow of Lincoln College and Research Fellow at the Institute.
After a year as the University Assessor and a term’s sabbatical, he resumed his teaching for both College and Faculty. During his sabbatical, he started work on an article, “The Magical Mystery of Words: ‘Direct Effect’ and All That”, which will instead be expanded into a monograph. It formed the basis of a series of lectures in Lund, Copenhagen, and Oslo in April, and in Stockholm in November. What is more, he wrote a piece on the development over time of the jurisprudence on the EU’s internal market. This will be published by the Collège d’Europe, where he presented his findings in February 2019. In March, he contributed an overview of “Legal Commentaries – Law and its Literature from a Comparative Perspective: English Law”, to a seminar on legal literature at the University of Münster. He is currently developing this into an article, to be published next year. His next big publication project is a monograph on the Free Movement of Goods. Brexit was a topic on which he wrote two pieces for Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law. He also delivered presentations on this to the ‘Lincoln Leads’ series of seminars, and to the Bodley Club at Merton College. He participated in radio programmes on the subject and briefed a number of journalists. Shortly before the end of the Institute’s reporting period, he addressed the newly constituted Internal Market Committee of the European Parliament on potential amendments to the legislation concerning the free movement of goods.
20 Luca Enriques is Professor of Corporate Law, Fellow of Jesus College, ECGI Fellow and Research Fellow at the Institute.
He has given lectures, seminars and tutorials for the Faculty’s Comparative Corporate Law and Principles of Financial Regulation courses and conducted research on comparative corporate governance and EU financial regulation. During the year he has been a visiting professor at the University of Sydney Law School and has given keynote lectures at Monash University, the Ibero-American Institute for Law and Finance, and the University of Auckland.
His main work relevant to the Institute’s role has been to organise the Third Oxford Business Law Blog Annual Conference on “Centros and European Company Law: Twenty Years of Living Dangerously”, co-sponsored by the IECL, to co-edit a special issue of the European Business Organization Law Review containing the articles presented at the conference, to start the work on the book An Introduction to EU Financial Markets Law, which has been accepted for publication in the Clarendon Series of Oxford University Press, and to co-author two articles on how network theory can be used to improve financial regulation (one with Alessandro Romano and Thom Wetzer, forthcoming in the Journal of Corporate Law, and one with Alessandro Romano and Jonathan Macey, forthcoming in the American University Law Review) and one paper on how technology affects the functions of corporate boards (with Dirk Zetzsche). He has also co-edited two books: Autonomous Systems and the Law, (C.H. Beck-Nomos (with Nikita Aggarwal, Horst Eidenmüller, Luca Enriques, Jennifer Payne and Kristin van Zwieten)) and The Law and Finance of Related Party Transactions (Cambridge University Press, 2019 (with Tobias Tröger)).
During the year, he has been re-appointed as member of the Consultative Working Group to the Financial Innovation Standing Committee of the European Securities Markets Authority, appointed as one of the four academic members of the Committee of Market Participants and Investors of Consob, the Italian financial markets authority, and elected Fellow of the European Banking Institute.
21 Wolfgang Ernst is the Regius Professor of Civil Law, Fellow of All Souls College and Research Fellow at the Institute.
Based on a paper given at the Collège de France, the exchange of legal ideas between European countries in the late 18th and 19th century was exemplified for the issue of collegiate courts’ decision-making processes.
Three studies concern issues arising out of the interaction of member states’ private laws and the European law. A study, co-authored with Dr Predrag Sunaric, analysed, from a conflicts of law perspective, how private law of a member state, interwoven as it is with European Union law, needs to be applied by a court of a non-member state. The question is asked and answered from a Swiss perspective. The same question will arise, after ‘Brexit’, whenever British conflict of law rules point to the private law of a member state as applicable law. Another study focussed on technical issues dealt with by the ‘EU (Withdrawal) Act’, which – successfully, in the author’s view – defines fine-tuned principles for the transformation of Union law into domestic law. Another (small) matter raised by the Brexit-process is the exact normative timing of the end of the UK’s membership in the European Union and the exact moment when the relationship is transformed; this topic is addressed in the last of the contributions listed below.
Selected publications:
“Modalités de vote dans les tribunaux collégiaux: La diffusion des idées des Lumières en Europe au 19ème siècle" (2018) 15 Glossae, 81 (available at: http://www.glossae.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/6.ERNST_.pdf)
(with Predrag Sunaric) “Zum Gebrauch von EU-Recht durch Schweizer Gerichte: IPRG Art. 13 und Privatrecht von EU-Mitgliedstaaten”, in Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Europarecht / Annuaire suisse de droit européen 2017/2018 (Schulthess Verlag, 2018), 483-502
“Transformation von EU-Recht in Landesrecht – Aspekte des ‘EU (Withdrawal) Act’”, in A. Kellerhals (ed) Europa in der Welt. Referate zu Fragen der Zukunft Europas (Schulthess Verlag, 2019), 121- 140, and in [2018] Zeitschrift für die gesamte Privatrechtswissenschaft (ZfPW) 369 ff
“‘Von dem Tag aber und von der Stunde’ - Wann passiert der Brexit?”, in M. Notter, R.H. Weber, A. Heinemann and T. Baumgartner (eds) Europäische Idee und Integration - mittendrin und nicht dabei. Liber amicorum für Andreas Kellerhals (Schulthess Verlag, 2018), 51 ff.
Selected presentations:
“Statutory interpretation in Roman Law”, Inaugural Lecture, University of Oxford (15 February 2019)
“Insulam exurere – reading Coll. 12.7.1–3 closely”, Conference on ‘Principle and Pragmatism in Roman Juristic Argument’, University of Cambridge (29-30 August 2019)
“Roman foundations of the law of obligations”, LXXIIIe Session de la Société Internationale Fernand de Visscher pour l'Histoire des Droits de l'Antiquité (SIHDA), University of Edinburgh (2-7 September 2019)
22 Ariel Ezrachi is Director of the Centre for Competition Law and Policy, within the Institute, Slaughter and May Professor of Competition Law and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He is a Deputy Director of the Institute.
His research focuses on competition law and policy, with emphasis on the digital platform economy. Two research projects this year focused on the scope and limits of competition law and the possible need for change in enforcement policy and substantive analysis.
The first of these projects was part of a team effort, led by the Committee on Digital Platforms, Stigler Center, University of Chicago. The report, released in September 2019, considers, among other things, the changing digital market dynamics, the tipping on markets, and possible need for change of US approach to antitrust enforcement and regulation.
The second project focused on the application of EU competition law to digital markets and means to safeguard the consumer interest. This project formed part of an initiative led by the European Consumer Organisation – BEUC. The final report will be published in October 2019.
Selected publications and reports:
(co-authored) Final Report of the Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms (September 2019)
“Study on the Role of Competition Policy in Protecting Consumers’ Well-being in the Digital Era” (October 2019) BEUC
(with Maurice E. Stucke) “Online Platforms and Market Power” (September 2019) Submission to the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law
(with Maurice E. Stucke) “Sustainable and Unchallenged Algorithmic Tacit Collusion” (2019) Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property (available at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fde32e64-30b0-41b8-9477-de4cc716d902)
(with Agustin Reyna) “Online Dystopia? – European Competition Law and the Digital Economy” (2019) Competition Law Insight
(with Viktoria Robertson) “Competition, Market Power and Third-Party Tracking” (2019) 42 World Competition
(with Jay Modrall) “Rising to the Challenge – Competition Law and the Digital Economy” (Winter 2019) CLI (editorial)
(with Maurice E. Stucke) “Antitrust, Algorithmic Pricing and Tacit Collusion”, in W. Barfield and U. Pagallo (eds) Research Handbook on the Law of Artificial Intelligence (Edward Elgar, 2018), Chapter 24
(with John Armour, Luca Enriques and John Vella) “Putting Technology to Good Use for Society: the Role of Corporate, Competition and Tax Law” (2019) Journal of the British Academy 6(S1), 285-321
“EU Competition Law Goals and the Digital Economy” [Working paper] (2018) Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 17
23 Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson is Conseillère d’Etat and was, until 2018, Professor of Law at the University Panthéon-Assas, Paris II. She also was Vice-President of the International Academy of Comparative Law and president of a European network, Trans Europe Experts. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
She has been a member of leading international working groups in contract law (notably at Unidroit and at the Hague Conference). She was special Counsellor for Vice-President of the European Commission Viviane Reding, in European contract law (2011-2014). She is a member of the Council of the European Law Institute. She publishes in the field of European and comparative contract law, in French and in English. She has also been involved, with the French Ministry of Education in the establishment of a new course entitled “Droit et grands enjeux contemporains” for the students who are in “terminale”.
Her research is partly based on the idea that new instruments, including new textbooks, are needed for the teaching of comparative law. This also relates to the formation of a new discipline, namely “European private law”, which has risen with the development of various international and European research groups. As General Secretary and then President of the Société de legislation comparée, she has already contributed to developing the presence of French lawyers, in the area of European private law, in various European projects, including that financed by the European Commission for the elaboration of a Draft Common Frame of Reference in Europe (DCFR).
She is convinced that in an extremely complex legal world, comparative law, closely linked as it is to other disciplines (history, sociology, linguistics, ethnology, economy), can no longer be structured and taught by merely dividing up the global legal world into a few large legal families, particularly since within law itself, new sciences are developing (legal sociology, economic analysis of law, digital issues etc.) which are an invitation to any lawyer, especially a comparative lawyer, to cast his eye beyond the law. Most of her work engages in a renewed analysis of the phenomena of Europeanisation and internationalisation of the law, inspired by her experiences drawn from her participation in the various international and European academic networks.
Selected publications:
(with Simon Whittaker and John Cartwright) (eds) La réécriture du code civil. Le droit français des contrats après la réforme de 2016 (Société de législation compare, 2018)
(with Hugh Beale, Jacobien Rutgers, Denis Tallon and Stefan Vogenauer) Cases, Materials and Texts on Contract Law, Ius Commune Casebooks on the Common Law of Europe, 3rd Edition (Hart Publishing, 2019)
(with François Ancel) Le nouveau droit des contrats: Guide bilingue à l'usage des praticiens (LGDJ, 2019)
“Comparative Law in France”, in M. Reimann and R. Zimmermann (eds) Oxford Handbook on Comparative Law, 2nd Edition (Oxford University Press, 2019), Chapter 2
(with Diane Galbois-Lehalle, Hein Kötz and Carine Signat) Droit européen des contrats (Sirey, 2019) (this is a translation and an update of Hein Kötz, Europaïsches Vertragsrecht)
(with Thomas Clay, Florence Renucci and Sandrine Zientara-Longeay) (eds) Etats généraux de la recherche sur le droit et la justice (LexisNexis, 2018)
24 Mark Freedland QC (Hon), FBA is a former Director of the IECL, Emeritus Professor of Employment Law in the University of Oxford, and Emeritus Research Fellow in Law at St John’s College. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute.
His commitment to European and comparative law studies have continued to be expressed though his work in the field of labour/employment law. The major instance of this during the academic year 2018-19 has consisted in his participation in a project of research and writing on the personal scope of employment laws in EU law and in a number of Member States of the European Union (including the UK, to date!). This project has now resulted in a publication consisting in a Special Issue of the European Labour Law Journal, as listed below. He has also been engaged in a project of research and writing, under the title of ‘Criminality at Work’, which is inter-disciplinary as between labour law and criminal law, and which has a comparative law element in that, while primarily concerned with UK law, it includes comparisons with North American and Australian law.
In June 2019 he took part in the International Conference of the Labour Law Research Network in Valparaiso, Chile, where he was a recipient of one of the Bob Hepple Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Labour Law which the Network awards at each of its biennial conferences.
Selected publications:
(with John Bowers, Anne Davies, Ruth Dukes and Birke Häcker) “Sir Otto Kahn-Freund QC (1900-1979): a Retrospective” [2019] Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht (ZEuP), Issue 2, 315-336
(with Nicola Countouris and Valerio De Stefano) (eds) Testing the ‘Personal Work’ Relation: New Trade Union Strategies for New Forms of Employment. Special Issue of the European Labour Law Journal (September 2019), Volume 10, No.3
(with Nicola Countouris and Valerio De Stefano) “Preface”, supra, pp.175-78
“New Trade Union Strategies for New Forms of Employment – a Brief Analytical and Normative Foreword”, supra, pp.179-82
(with Hitesh Dhorajiwala) “UK response to New Trade Union Strategies for New Forms of Employment”, supra, pp.281-90
25 Andreas von Goldbeck is a University Lecturer at the University of Stockholm and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
His main research areas are international commercial arbitration, European private law, European Union law, comparative law, private international law and insurance. This academic year, Andreas von Goldbeck spent mainly focusing on research about the relationship between EU law and arbitration. With colleagues in Stockholm, he organised a highly successful international conference, held in Stockholm in October 2018, entitled ‘The Future of Arbitration in Europe’ (see below, p. 53) exploring the impact of EU law, particularly the recent Achmea ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union on commercial arbitration as well as on investor-state arbitration. At the conference, Andreas von Goldbeck presented a paper on the Brussels Recast Regulation and arbitration.
Selected publications:
“Achmea—the Aftermath” (2018) Juridisk Tidskrift, Nr 4, 929ff.
“The Enforcement of EU Law in Arbitration” (2018) 3 Volume 21 Europarättslig tidskrift, 435ff.
“L’Indemnisation du Non-respect des Clauses Compromissoires” (2018) 2 Volume 70 La Revue Internationale de Droit Comparé (RIDC), 1ff.
“EU Law and Arbitration—the Enforcement of Arbitral Agreements” (2018) 2 Volume 21 Europarättslig tidskrift, 313ff.
“Consumer Arbitrations in the European Union” (2018) Volume 18 Pepperdine Dispute Resolution, 263ff.
Selected presentations:
“The Brussels recast and arbitration”, SCCL/IECL Stockholm conference ‘The Future of Arbitration in Europe’, Stockholm (26-27 October 2018)
“Dispute resolution and the belt and road initiative”, Lund Seminar on ‘Legal Complexities Along the Belt and Road Initiative’, Lund (3 May 2019)
26 Birke Häcker succeeded John Cartwright as Director of the Institute in October 2018. She holds the statutory Chair in Comparative Law and is a Professorial Fellow of Brasenose College. In 2018-19, she was also a Visiting Professor at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
With her background in both English and German law, her research focuses on core private law (especially contract, tort, property/trusts, restitution of unjust enrichment, and succession), usually in comparative perspective and often involving a historical angle. Aside from bridging the common law – civil law divide, she has a particular interest in the emerging phenomenon of comparative law being conducted between different common law jurisdictions, often without being acknowledged as such (‘comparative common law’). She is fascinated by the interplay of private law with surrounding areas, such as tax law. At Oxford, she teaches the FHS course on ‘Comparative Private Law’, the BCL/MJur course called ‘Comparative Contract Law in Europe’ as well as offering a number of introductory lectures and seminars on both comparative law and the English common law. She regularly supervises research students within the fields of her expertise.
In March 2019, she organised (together with Professor Hugh Beale) an author workshop on ‘Contractual Non-Performance in a Comparative Context’, which was attended by leading contract law scholars from around the world (see below, p. 59). Over the course of the year, she presented various papers in Oxford, London, Stockholm, Seville, Paris, Milan, Salzburg, Singapore, Greifswald and Hamburg. She also acted as external examiner for a doctoral thesis on comparative succession law at the University of Santiago de Compostela. During the summer break, she was invited by Singapore Management University to conduct research and discuss aspects of her work on ‘comparative common law’ with students, colleagues, judges and practitioners in Singapore.
Selected publications:
“All Souls College v Codrington (1720): Money, Books, and the Interpretation of Wills – A Testamentary Drama in Three Acts”, in B. Sloan (ed) Landmark Cases in Succession Law (Hart Publishing, 2019), 11–32
“Otto Kahn-Freund as a Comparative Lawyer”, in J. Bowers, R. Dukes, A.C.L. Davies, M. Freedland and B. Häcker, “Sir Otto Kahn-Freund QC (1900–1979): A Retrospective” [2019] Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht (ZEuP) 315, 330–36
“‘…the Heir, which in the Laws of England is called an Executor...’. Zum System der Nachlassabwicklung in England”, in M. Löhnig, A. Dutta et al. (eds) Testamentsvollstreckung in Europa (Gieseking, 2018), 191–219
Selected presentations:
“Enrichissement injustifié - unjust enrichment - ungerechtfertigte Bereicherung”, Atélier Tribonien: ‘L’enrichissement injustifié’, University of Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas (June 2019)
“English Law in the 21st Century: A Tale of Two Traditions”, Inaugural Lecture, University of Oxford (February 2019 – see p. 55)
“‘Everything Interlinks’: How Property Transfer Systems Shape Private Law”, Faculty Lecture, Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law, Stockholm University (January 2019 – see p. 54)
“When ‘Substance Over Form’ Gets Out of Hand: A Four-Pronged Critique of English Private Law”, Plenary Lecture, Winter Conference of the Chancery Bar Association, London (January 2019).
27 Geneviève Helleringer is the IECL Lecturer in French Law and Business Law and a Research Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. She is also a law professor at Essec Business School Paris, a fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and since 2019 a member of the editorial board for the ECGI Paper series (Law).
Her academic research focuses on contract, corporate and financial law as well as alternative dispute resolution. Across these subjects, she has an in-depth research expertise in the issue of conflicts of interest, understood as situations where one’s own interest interferes with obligations one has to act in another person’s interest. Her work draws on insights from comparative law, as well as psychology and ethics. She also as strong experience in designing experiments and analysing experimental data. For the past year, Dr Helleringer collected data for a project entitled “Thou (Lawyers) Shalt Not Lie” (designed with Russell Korobkin, UCLA), relating to the legality and morality of negotiation and the potential impact of interventions via contract or norms. She also designed an online data collection as lead author (together with Marwan Sinaceur (Essec) and Hajo Adam (Bath University), who are both social psychologists) for a cross-cultural study on promises and engagement (9 jurisdictions and 2,700 participants).
Dr Helleringer is in charge of the French Law and Languages and French Law and Methods courses for Course 2 (Law with French Law). She also teaches Comparative Corporate Law as well as the Commercial Negotiation and Mediation and the International Commercial Arbitration courses, which incorporates important aspects of European and comparative law. She is one of the founders and editors of the Journal of Financial Regulation (OUP). Since 2018, Dr Helleringer has been an academic editor of the Oxford Business Law Blog.
Selected publications:
“Related-Party Transactions in France. a Critical Assessment”, in L. Enriques and T. Tröger (eds) The Law and Finance of Related Party Transactions (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Chapter 14
(with Christina Skinner) “Conflicts of Interest: Compliance and Culture”, in D. Busch, G. Ferrarini and G. van Solinge (eds) Corporate Governance of Financial Institutions. Law, Conduct and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2019), Chapter 20
(with Martin Gilter) “Fiduciary Duties in Civil Law Jurisdictions”, in P. Miller and R. Sitkoff (eds) Oxford Handbook on Fiduciary Duties (Oxford University Press, 2019), 583-602
(with Giuliano Castellano) “The Social Psychology of EU Financial Regulatory Governance”, in E. Avgouleas and D.C. Donald (eds) The Political Economy of Financial Regulation (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 160-188.
Selected presentations:
“Duty of loyalty of the board: self-dealing and corporate opportunities’ (with M. Corradi, Stockholm University), Comparative Corporate Governance, Fordham Law School (27-28 September 2019)
‘Raison d’être. Peanuts, revolution or new capitalism’, Workshop Paris I University and Max Planck Institute for International and Comparative Law Hamburg, Paris (6 July 2019)
‘Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Arbitration’, III Oxford Symposium on Comparative International Commercial Arbitration, Wolfson College (16 November 2018)
28 Martijn Hesselink is Professor of Transnational Law and Theory at the European University Institute and Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
This year his research was focused entirely on his research project on the political philosophy of European contract law. The project addresses fundamental normative questions of European contract law from the perspectives of leading contemporary political theories. His aim is to complete the book manuscript in 2020. As a result of his exclusive focus on this book project, he did not publish any articles this year.
In 2019, he delivered the general course at the Academy of European Law in Florence. The title of his course was: ‘Contract law and justice in the European Union’. Moreover, his main occupation during the year was his move from the University of Amsterdam to the European University Institute in Florence.
29 Andreas Humm was the Max Planck Gildesgame Fellow in the Institute during Hilary Term 2019.
His research and PhD project looks at the limits on testamentary freedom from a comparative perspective. In many countries, freedom of testation features prominently as a basic principle of the law of succession. The limits imposed on freedom of testation in order to accommodate other persons’ rights and freedoms, as well as the basic needs and exigencies of the legal and social order, differ in form and extent among the different legal systems. Solidarity with close family members, freedom, equality, and dignity are only a few of the fundamental values that can have a limiting effect on last wills. The project tries to depict these limits on testamentary freedom from a comparative perspective, asking how the law opposes the wishes of the testator, and whether form and extent of such limitations differ remarkably between Germany, England, and South Africa. One of the key questions is whether the respective limits can be linked to national, historical, political, or socio-cultural aspects or whether they can be seen as a universal feature.
Selected publication:
“Case Note on OLG Frankfurt a.M., 05.02.2019 –20 W 98/18” (2019) Zeitschrift für die gesamte erbrechtliche Praxis, 364-366
Selected presentation:
“The limits imposed on freedom of testation by fundamental values – Germany, England, and South Africa in comparative perspective”, Institute of European and Comparative Law (February 2019)
30 Ciara Kennefick is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and Official Student (Tutorial Fellow) at Christ Church and Research Fellow in the Institute.
Ciara’s research examines private law in England and France from comparative and historical perspectives. Her work often transcends disciplinary as well as jurisdictional boundaries; one particular interest is the connection between law and mathematics in England and France.
She is currently completing a monograph on The Just Price in Contracts in England and France: Receptions, Contrasts and Convergence which will be published by Hart. She is also working on two papers which focus on the law of servitudes in both systems. She was invited to present one of these papers, on the reception of a French idea in English law, at the University of St Andrews in July 2019 and at the University of Cambridge in September 2019.
During the year she has been a Visiting Lecturer in Comparative Law at Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas.
Selected presentations:
“‘Continuous and apparent’ problems with easements: revisiting a famous legal transplant”, paper presented at the British Legal History Conference, University of St Andrews (July 2019)
“The French roots of the ‘continuous and apparent’ problems with continuous easements in English law”, paper presented at a workshop on ‘Reasons and Context in Comparative Law’ to mark the retirement of Professor John Bell, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge (September 2019)
31 Mark Klamberg was the Stockholm Centre-Oxford Fellow for 2018- 2019 and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Christ Church.
During the year he worked on the research project “Use of Force in International Law – the Status and Role of Explanation of Votes” financed by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). He also organised a workshop as part of the project “Investigation and Prosecution of International Crimes in Scandinavia” and has been successful in raising funds for publishing two edited books, to be published in Swedish by the publisher Jure and to be published in English by Scandinavian Studies in Law. During the year in Oxford, he gave lectures and presentations to the Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) seminar series, the Procedural Justice and Evidence Discussion Group, the Public International Law (PIL) Discussion Group and the IECL lunchtime seminar series.
Selected publications:
“Raphael Lemkin in Stockholm – Significance for his Work on Axis Rule in Occupied Europe”, (2019) Genocide Studies and Prevention, vol. 13(1), 64-87
“Evolution of Rules and Concepts in International Humanitarian Law: Navigating through Legal Gaps and Fault-lines”, in M. Deland et al. (eds) International Humanitarian Law and Justice: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (Routledge, 2018), 79-84
“Lemkin on Vandalism and the Protection of Cultural Works during Armed Conflict”, in M. Deland et al. (eds) International Humanitarian Law and Justice: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (Routledge, 2018), 183-196
32 Dorota Leczykiewicz is Associate Professor of Law, Official Fellow of St Peter’s College and Research Fellow at the Institute.
She spent most of 2018-19 researching the concept of ‘general principles’ in EU law. This was in connection with an article, now published by the Common Market Law Review, in which she disagrees with the view put forward by the Court of Justice of the EU that prohibition of abusive practices is a general principle of EU law with the consequence that it does not have to be implemented by national law before the prohibition can be relied on against a private party. The article argues that a principle which prohibits unspecified abusive practices at a general level and capable of creating new enforcement powers is alien to pre-existing EU case law, and, to the extent it covers also abuses of national law, cannot be justified on constitutional grounds.
She has also continued to examine the changes in EU fundamental rights law, including in relation to the concept of ‘general principles’. After the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights became formally binding, it was not clear what continued normative use the category of ‘general principles’ should have in EU law. But since judicial activism has not stopped and the Court of Justice of the EU continues to have much influence over the structure and substance of EU fundamental rights law, she has proposed to use ‘general principles’ as a descriptive concept referring to situations where the Court of Justice is developing content that is additional to legislative EU fundamental rights law, but nevertheless can be balanced against Charter rights, or is ‘upgrading’ existing elements of the legislative content to the status of ‘principles’ restricting Charter rights.
She continued to lecture EU law to Oxford undergraduates within the Constitutionalism in the EU lecture series in MT 2019 and then in the form of revision lectures in TT 2019. She also taught on the Private Law and Fundamental Rights and Constitutional Principles of the EU BCL/MJur courses. She is supervising four DPhil students, all of whom in 2018-19 successfully completed their MPhils. Each DPhil project involves both EU law and comparative law elements.
Selected publications:
“Prohibition of Abusive Practices as a ‘General Principle’ of EU Law” (2019) 56 Common Market Law Review, 703
“Loss and its Compensation in the Proposed New French Regime of Extra-contractual Liability”, in J.-S. Borghetti and S. Whittaker (eds) French Civil Liability in Comparative Perspective (Hart Publishing, 2019)
Selected presentations
“Too little or too much resilience? On the use and abuse of ‘general principles’ in EU law”, Conference of the Swedish Network for European Legal Studies ‘The Resilience of General Principles of EU Law and Fundamental Rights in the Digital EU Legal Order’, Stockholm (8-9 November 2018)
“The curious case of ‘general principles’ in EU law”, Oxford Law Faculty Research Seminar (24 January 2019)
33 Rodrigo Momberg Uribe is Professor of Private Law at the Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile, where he teaches courses on contract and consumer law. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
His current areas of research are:
1. Latin American Contract Law: taking as a point of reference the Principles of Latin American Contract Law (PLACL), the research is aimed to study and evaluate the process of harmonisation of contract in Latin America. The research includes a comparative analysis between the PLACL and other similar initiatives, as the PECL and the PICC.
2. Long-term contracts: Based on the 2016 version of the PICC, the research intends to analyse the main features of long-term contracts, their differences with traditional contracts (as sales) and how they have been recognised (or not) by national legislation, including both common and civil law jurisdictions.
Selected publications:
(with Alberto Pino) “Los contratos de larga duración en la edición 2016 de los Principios Unidroit sobre contratos comerciales internacionales” (2018) Revista Chilena de Derecho Privado, No.30, 163-191
“Los Principios Latinoamericanos de Derecho de los Contratos: Naturaleza, fines y proyecciones” (2018) Latin American Legal Studies, V.2, 51-66
(with Maria Elisa Morales and Alberto Pino) “Enforcement and Effectiveness of Consumer Law in Chile: A General Overview”, in H.-W. Micklitz and G. Saumier (eds) Enforcement and Effectiveness of Consumer Law (Springer, 2018), 151-172
Selected presentations:
“Alternatives for the measuring of gain-based damages for breach of contract”, 14th Annual International Conference on Contracts (KCON XIV), Tulane University, New Orleans, EEUU
“Cambio de circunstancias y frustración del fin del contrato en los Principios Latinoamericanos de Derecho de los Contratos”, Congreso Internacional Los Principios Latinoamericanos de Derecho de los Contratos, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador
34 Juan Pablo Murga Fernández is Senior Lecturer of Civil Law at the University of Seville, where he teaches contract law, property law, family and succession law. At the IECL, he is a Visiting Research Fellow. During 2018- 2019, he gave several lectures on property law and tort law in the ‘Introduction to Spanish Law’ course, in collaboration with Professor García Oliva, Spanish Law Tutor at the Institute. He is also Professor of Comparative Property and Succession Law at Florida International University (‘Summer Study Abroad Programme’).
His research concerns contract law, property law, comparative succession law and data protection. He is currently working on a book focused on the payment of debts in succession law from a European comparative perspective. He is an editor of different Spanish and Italian law journals: the Boletín del Colegio de Registradores, Crónica Jurídica Hispalense and Revista Internacional de Derecho del Turismo, Il diritto della famiglia e delle succesioni in Europa. At the University of Seville, he is responsible for the European Research Project “H2020 Training Activities to Implement the Data Protection Reform (TATODPR)”. He is also a member of two important research projects financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, which focus on the analysis of the real estate market and the economic crisis from a private comparative law perspective.
In 2018 Professor Murga Fernández was awarded a ‘LFUI – Guest Professorship 2019’ at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), where he has given a course of comparative property law and comparative succession law. In 2019 he was awarded a ‘Simon Visiting Professorship’ at the University of Manchester, where he will teach European comparative contract law and European comparative property law.
Selected publications:
“Derechos de los individuos”, in J.P. Murga Fernández, M.A. Fernández Scagliusi and M. Espejo Lerdo de Tejada (eds) Protección de Datos, Responsabilidad Activa y Técnicas de Garantía. Curso de Delegado de Protección De Datos (Reus, 2018), Chapter 5
(with Manuel Espejo Lerdo de Tejada, Francisco Capilla Roncero, Francisco José Aranguren Urriza and César Hornero Méndez) (eds) Presente y Futuro del Derecho de Sucesiones: las Legítimas y la Libertad de Testar (Aranzadi Thomson-Reuters, 2019)
Introducción al Derecho Inglés de los Contratos (translation of J. Cartwright, An Introduction to the English Law of Contract for the Civil Lawyer), Editorial Aranzadi Thomson-Reuters (Colección Panoramas de Derecho, Facultad de Derecho de Sevilla, 2019)
“Payment of Descendants’ Debts in Succession Law: ‘Effects’ and ‘Defects’ of the German and Spanish Legal Systems” (2018) 2 Zeitschrift für europäisches Privatrecht, 359-381
Selected presentations:
“Property from a comparative perspective. The transfer of goods from a European comparative perspective”, Law Faculty of the University of Innsbruck (January 2019)
“Sources of law and interpretation of statutes in Spain”, Institute of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford (February 2019)
“Payment of debts in succession law a European comparative perspective”, “The Spanish codification”, and “Succession rights of cohabitants from a comparative perspective”, all presentations at the Law Faculty of the University of Innsbruck (June 2019)
35 Justine Pila is Associate Professor in Intellectual Property Law, Fellow of St Catherine’s College and a Research Fellow at the Institute.
Her main areas of research interest are Intellectual Property (IP) Law and Regulation, with a focus (within the latter) on the regulatory impacts of technology particularly. These are also her main areas of teaching for the Faculty, along with EU Law and Jurisprudence at St Catherine’s. Much of her work is European and comparative in focus.
Within IP she is the author (with P.L.C. Torremans) of European Intellectual Property Law, published by OUP and now in its second edition, and the editor (with R.C. Dreyfuss) of The Oxford Handbook of Intellectual Property Law, which is comparative in focus, consistent with the general orientation of the Handbook series. She is pleased and honoured also to have recently taken over the authorship of the late Catherine Seville’s highly regarded EU Intellectual Property Law and Policy, published by Edward Elgar, for inclusion in Elgar’s European Law and Policy series.
Within Regulation, a major project in 2018-19 was to establish the Law Faculty’s first seminar series focused on the regulatory impacts of modern (digital and bio) technologies as a second stream of the “regulation in action” section of the BCL/MJur Regulation course. The transnational nature and complexity of the regulatory challenges created by new technologies have ensured a central role for supranational law and general principles in managing them, with the result that European and comparative law have also been at the heart of this project. In the coming year she is looking forward to developing further these seminars and to working on a monograph related to them.
Selected publications:
(with Paul Torremans) European Intellectual Property Law, 2nd Edition (Oxford University Press, 2019)
“Property in Human Genetic Material”, in T. Hervey and D. Orentlicher (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law (Oxford University Press, 2019)
36 Conor Quigley QC is in practice at Serle Court, specialising in European and Competition Law. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
During the year he has continued research for the next edition of EC State Aid Law. He has delivered papers at competition law conferences in Trier, Hong Kong and London.
37 Georg Ringe is Director of the Institute of Law and Economics at the University of Hamburg. At Oxford, he is a Visiting Professor at the Law Faculty and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
His research continues to lie in the general area of comparative and European business law – with a special interest in the regulation of financial markets, corporate law, capital markets, and insolvency law.
Georg is an editor of the Journal of Financial Regulation. In 2017, he was elected Research Member with the European Corporate Governance Institute, Brussels; in 2018, he was appointed Fellow Academic Member at the European Banking Institute, Frankfurt. Since September 2019, he has been a member of the editorial board of the Oxford Business Law Blog. In 2018 he was awarded the Senior Scholar Prize of the American Society of Comparative Law.
Selected publications:
“Der Standort Hamburg im Finanzmarkt: eine Renaissance”, in T. Repgen, F. Jeßberger and M. Kotzur (eds) 100 Jahre Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität Hamburg (Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2019), 709-731
“Commentary on Articles 17-21 of the Market Abuse Regulation 596/2014”, in M. Lehmann and C. Kumpan (eds) European Financial Services Law (Nomos/Beck/Hart Publishing, 2019), 778-835
“Commentary on the Transparency Directive 2004/109/EC”, in M. Lehmann and C. Kumpan (eds) European Financial Services Law (Nomos/Beck/Hart Publishing, 2019), 1099-1230
(with Jatine Patel) “The Dark Side of Bank Resolution: Counterparty Risk through Bail-in” (2019) European Banking Institute Working Paper No 31/2019
Selected presentations and blog contributions:
“The dark side of bank resolution: counterparty risk through bail-in”, presented at various events in Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Brussels and Amsterdam
“Brexit and how it affects capital markets (regulation)”, Brexit Workshop, Bucerius Law School, Hamburg
Keynote speaker, “Introduction to law and economics”, “Corporate law and economics’, British University in Egypt, Cairo
“A regulatory sandbox for robo advice’, EJLE Workshop on Law and Economics of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, Rome (December 2018)
Panellist, “10 years after the financial crisis – 3 years after Dieselgate – do we need more or less corporate governance regulation?”, Workshop on Corporate Governance and the Capital Allocation Process Within Society, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management
Co-host and session chair, ‘Financial Stability Conference 2018’, ESMT Berlin
(with Luca Enriques) “Fintech Startups and Incumbent Players. Policy Challenges and Opportunities”, Oxford Business Law Blog (18 September 2019), available under https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/business-law-blog/blog/2019/09/call-papers-fintech-startups- and-incumbent-players-policy-challenges
38 Stephen Weatherill is Deputy Director of the Institute, Jacques Delors Professor of European Law and Fellow of Somerville College.
His teaching and research activities cover the law of the European Union, embracing both constitutional and institutional law and the law of the internal market. He delivers lectures on the undergraduate FHS course and also leads seminars on the taught postgraduate courses on EU law. He supervises several graduate research students working in the field of EU law. In the course of the year he has delivered conference papers in Bruges (on minimum harmonisation in the internal market), Edinburgh and Cambridge (on the fortieth anniversary of the Cassis de Dijon ruling of the Court of Justice), and Maribor (on the ‘over-constitutionalisation’ of free movement law), and in July he taught on a summer school on the Global Law of Sport in the Giant Mountains of the Czech Republic. He also completed the editing of a book on Better Regulation in EU Contract Law in collaboration with Esther van Schagen, a former visitor to the IECL, which will be published later in 2019.
He has spent renewed time and energy trying to penetrate the Brexit debate, in order to make the fundamental point that what is currently delivered multilaterally through the EU (be it cross-border trade integration, an invisible border in Ireland, action to combat climate change, and so on) cannot be delivered unilaterally by the UK, and that accordingly the slogan ‘take back control’ is a perversion of reality. But he doesn’t think he – or anyone else – has made much headway. There is a project worth conducting on whether academics have the right tools to deploy against the crusading ignorance and dishonesty of leading Brexiters.
Selected publications:
“Surrendering the Right to Regulate”, in F. Amtenbrink, G. Davies, D. Kochenov and J. Lindeboom (eds) The Internal Market and the Future of European Integration: Essays in Honour of Laurence W. Gormley (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Chapter 6
“EU Law on Public Procurement: Internal Market Law Made Better”, in S. Bogojević, X. Groussot and J. Hettne (eds) Discretion in EU Public Procurement Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2019), pp.21-49
39 Simon Whittaker is Professor of European Comparative Law, Fellow of St John’s College and Research Fellow at the Institute.
He has given lectures, seminars and tutorials for the Faculty’s Comparative Private Law course and conducts research on English contract law. During the year he has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas and has presented a guest lecture entitled ‘The Consumer Rights Act 2015 Part 1’ at Bocconi University, Milan.
His main work relevant to the Institute’s role has been to prepare for publication as a book the papers of the colloquium held in September 2018, which he organised (together with Professor Jean-Sébastien Borghetti of the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas) on the proposed reform of the French law of civil liability. He wrote a chapter himself (“A Common Framework for Civil Liability?”), a joint chapter with Professor Borghetti (“Principles of Liability or a Law of Torts?”), translated some of the papers from the French as well as undertaking general editorial work including of the translation into English of the draft report bill which he and Professor Borghetti had earlier undertaken. The resulting book consists of 21 substantive chapters, ranging across a number of topics including the relationship between contractual and extra-contractual liability. The book will be published towards the end of 2019 by Hart Publishing/Bloomsbury as J.-S. Borghetti and S. Whittaker (eds) French Civil Liability in Comparative Perspective in the series Studies in the Institute of European and Comparative Law. The papers will also be published in French in an issue of the Revue des contrats in 2019.
Selected publication:
“Unfair Terms in Commercial Contracts and the Two Laws of Competition: French Law and English Law Contrasted” (2019) 39 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 404–434
40 Jan Zglinski was Erich Brost Lecturer in German Law and European Union Law at the Faculty of Law and St Hilda’s College during 2018-19.
His research interests lie in EU constitutional and internal market law, with a special focus on legal empirical approaches to studying the European Court of Justice. During the year he published several pieces on judicial deference and worked on finalising his monograph Europe’s Passive Virtues: Deference to National Authorities in EU Free Movement Law, which will be published by Oxford University Press later in 2019. He taught German Law for the Law Faculty and EU Law for St Hilda’s College.
Selected publications:
Europe’s Passive Virtues – Deference to National Authorities in EU Free Movement Law (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2019)
(with Bosko Tripkovic) “Contestation and Accommodation: Constitutional and Private Law Pluralism(s) in the EU”, in M. Durovic et al. (eds) The Transformation of Economic Law – Essays in Honour of Hans Micklitz (Hart, 2019), Chapter 16
“Doing Too Little or Too Much? Private Law Before the European Court of Human Rights” (2018) 37 Yearbook of European Law, 98
“Review of Agha (ed) Human Rights Between Law and Politics: The Margin of Appreciation in Post-National Contexts” (2018) 43 European Law Review, 977
“The Rise of Deference: the Margin of Appreciation and Decentralized Judicial Review in EU Free Movement Law” (2018) 55 Common Market Law Review, 1341
Selected presentations:
“Contestation and accommodation: constitutional and private law pluralism(s) in the EU”, European University Institute, Conference in Honour of Hans Micklitz: ‘The Transformation of Economic Law’ (7 June 2019)
“Measuring the European Court”, University of Oxford, Empirical and Socio-Legal Methods Workshop (10 May 2019)
“Deference and the evolution of EU free movement law”, University of Oxford, EU Law Discussion Group (23 January 2019)
41 Katja Ziegler is Sir Robert Jennings Professor of International Law at the University of Leicester and Director of the Centre of European Law and Internationalisation (CELI). She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute.
She teaches and researches in the areas of public international, human rights, EU law and comparative constitutional law. Her research concerns the constitutionalisation and interaction of legal orders in an international, European and comparative law context, in particular through human rights; and comparative foreign relations law, in particular the evolution of parliament’s role.
Selected publications:
“The Use of Force by the United Kingdom: Evolution of Accountability”, in C. Bradley (ed) Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law (Oxford University Press, 2019), 771-789
“AWACS I (Ger)”, in R. Grote, F. Lachenmann and R. Wolfrum (eds) Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (MPECCoL, 2019) (on parliamentary approval of military deployment decisions in Germany)
Selected presentations:
“Der Brexit: Zu Ursachen, Austrittsverfahren, Konsequenzen”, Annual Conference of the Görres Society, Quo vadis Europa – Gegenwarts- und Zukunftsfragen der europäischen Einigung, Paderborn (20-21 September 2019)
“Rechtliche und politische Herausforderungen des Brexit für das Vereinigte Königreich”, 25th Würzburg European Law Conference: Die EU zwischen Niedergang und Neugründung – Wege aus der Polykrise (19-20 July 2019)
“The use of force by the United Kingdom: evolution of accountability”, Centre of Transnational Legal Studies, Georgetown University London Branch (28 June 2019)
Other activities:
Joined Editorial Board of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly (Cambridge University Press)
Joined Advisory Board of the research strand and book series 'Global Europe' (Asser Institute, The Hague, Netherland; TMC Asser Press/Springer)
Convened the “Leicester Peace Talks”, a monthly interdisciplinary public seminar series at the Centre of European Law and Internationalisation (CELI), University of Leicester. In 2018-19 the theme of the series focused on the end of World War I, the interwar period, in particular the League of Nations and post-conflict peace building, details can be found at: https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/law/research/celi/celi-annual-lecture-series-leicester- peace-talks
42 Visitors to the Institute
View of Oxford
n addition to researchers who come to the Institute from partner institutions under the terms of our international institutional links, we host established academics from other I institutions as independent researchers under the terms of our Academic Visitor programme, and we occasionally also manage to accommodate doctoral students from other universities for short visits. Our visitors play a major part in the life of the Institute during their visit, and many of them give one of our weekly lunchtime seminars to explain their research to the benefit of Institute members and the wider Faculty and graduate students (and to give the visitors an opportunity to receive feedback on their work). The Institute hosted the following visitors between October 2018 and September 2019:
Visiting Fellows
Paris Visiting Fellow: Innovative and inspiring aspects of the English law relating to (i) contracts and commercial transactions, Professor Bertrand Fages (University (ii) company law and corporate governance and of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) (iii) regulation and law making
Max Planck Gildesgame Fellow, Michaelmas Term 2018: Preventive security mechanisms. Designing securities Dr Konrad Duden (Max Planck in a digital age Institute, Hamburg)
Max Planck Gildesgame Fellow, Hilary Term 2019: The limits imposed by fundamental values on freedom of testation. Germany, England and South Africa in Dr Andreas Humm (Max Planck comparative perspective Institute, Hamburg)
43 Academic Visitors
Dr Bruno Carra (University 7 Environmental damages: a comparative study Setembro, Brazil) between English and Brazilian law
Minority shareholders’ rights in European corporate Dr Marco Corradi (University of Lund) laws
Professor Gudula Deipenbrock Comparative law in the realms of company and (HTW University Berlin) financial markets law in the digital age
Dr Juan Fuentes Osorio (University of Hate speech: a comparative study of the English legal Jaén) context
Professor Mairan Gonçalves Maia Succession rights of the child in cases involving Junior (University of São Paulo) assisted reproductions in England and Latin America
Conceptualizing consumer exploitation in digital Dr Inge Graef (University of Tilburg) markets: how to revitalize competition law for a changing economy
Dr Laura Guffanti Pesenti (University Vicarious liability and responsabilità civile dei Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan) padroni e committenti
Dr Betül Kas (University of The transformation of European ‘legal field’ by Amsterdam) strategic litigation
Dr Sotirios Kotronis (Aristotle Assignment by operation of law in European contract University of Thessaloniki) law
Dr Raul Lafuente (University of EU law and international successions: towards a Alicante) common ‘civil law and common law’ approach
Professor Sabrina Lanni (University Artificial intelligence and consumer rights of Milan)
The UK legal regulation and experience around the Professor Antoni Legerén (University retention of title by the seller and the transfer of of A Coruña) ownership as a security for an obligation
Professor Yip Man (Singapore Comparative common law from the Singapore law Management University) perspective
Human rights due diligence and corporate Professor Carmen Márquez accountability at the European level: analysis of Carrasco (University of Seville) national legislation and case-law from a comparative and EU perspective
44 Professor Antonio Marzocco The judicial control of decisions by private (University of Campania “Luigi associations. The principles of due process in the Vanvitelli”) plurality of legal orders
The treaty making power in the UK: a comparative Dr Mario Mendez (Queen Mary analysis / The law and politics of the European University of London) citizens’ initiative
Conflicts of interest under EU public law: categories, Dr Javier Miranzo Diaz (University of implications, discretionary power and judicial Castilla-La Mancha) oversight
Dr Georgy Mordokhov (Lomonosov Board of directors: comparative study of the structure Moscow State University) activities and functions
Dr Päivi Neuvonen (University of European law and the politics of (dis)empowerment Helskinki)
Dr Diana Niksova (University of Cross-border labour mobility in the EU in light of the Vienna) fundamental freedoms
Electronic evidence in trans-border cases: proposed Professor Julio Pérez Gil (University European regulation, post-Brexit scenario and of Burgos) transatlantic dimension
How different competition laws have been formulated and applied in the pursuit of economic growth and Hassan Qaqaya (University of development and whether the multiple public policy Melbourne) objectives these policies aim to achieve can be considered as a whole
Professor Viktoria Robertson The intersection of competition law and innovation (University of Graz) from a comparative legal perspective
Professor Giesela Rühl (Friedrich- Brexit: impact on judicial cooperation and regulatory Schiller University of Jena) competition
Dr Beatrix Schibli (University of St Tribunals/courts in England and Switzerland: a Gallen) comparative perspective
For a problematic approach to the ‘constitutional’ Dr Luigi Testa (Bocconi University) position of ECB
Roman law as a bridge between Anglo-American law Dr Talya Uçaryilmaz (Bilkent and continental European law: a comparative University) analysis of the correct function of good faith and fair dealing
45 Dr Paul Verbruggen (University of The constitutionalization of private regulation: Tilburg) understanding the role of private law
Professor Ying Chieh Wu (Singapore Lost in the common law sea Management University)
Maison Française d’Oxford Visiting Graduate Students
Olga Giakouminaki (University of The state as a consumer – the peculiar case of public Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) procurement contracts
Liane Huttner (University of Paris 1 Algorithmic decision: a study on automated Panthéon-Sorbonne) decision-making
Visiting Graduate Students
The absolute priority rule and the distribution of the Giulia Ballerini (Bocconi University) surplus value of the reorganized firm
Julie Boyer (University of The assessment of contractual damages: a Luxembourg) comparative analysis
Luigi Buonanno (Bocconi University) The obligation of the guarantor in banking contracts
Katherine Filesia (University of The principles of trust law in the Dutch legal system Leiden)
Access to evidence in civil cartel damages claims. Benedikt Freund (University of Disclosure of evidence contained within the file of a Zurich) competition authority
The employee’s off-duty conduct in German and Lisa Holst (University of Tübingen) English law
Quincy Lobach (University of Content and limits of the right to performance Heidelberg)
46 The impact of algorithmic pricing on market Marcin Mleczko (Polish Academy of conditions and implications on competition law and Sciences) policy
Euigeun Park (Kyungpook National Co-ownership (tenancy in common, joint tenancy) University)
Anne-Jetske Schaap (University of Corporate criminal liability and duties of care Utrecht)
Private enforcement of competition law: the Anders Schäfer (University of interaction between public and private enforcement Copenhagen) and access to damages
Dealing with the law of the EU in the UK after Brexit Katharina Steinbrück (Humboldt with regard to consumer credit law and unfair terms University) in consumer contract
Marcel Zernikow (University of Paris Private international law of employment and the 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) internal market of the EU
The legal interpretation and regulation logic of Ziang Zhao (Peking University) investment management
47 Law with Law Studies in Europe and the European Student Exchange Programme
European cities in which our partner universities are based: Top-Left: Siena; Bottom-Left: Munich; Centre: Paris; Centre-Right-Top: Leiden; Centre-Right-Bottom: Bonn; Bottom-Right: Barcelona
he Institute is responsible for the Faculty’s four-year BA in Law with Law Studies in Europe, together with the associated exchanges with Law Faculties in our partner T European universities. The four-year BA course is a variant on the regular Oxford law degree that includes an extra year spent at one of Oxford’s partner universities abroad. It is thus also frequently called ‘Law Course 2’, and is an exchange programme, established under the Erasmus+ scheme, under which we also receive in Oxford a student from our partner universities for each of our own students we send there.
In recent years the following options have been offered:
Law with French Law, with 15 students going each year to the University of Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas;
Law with German Law, with 10 students going to the Universities of Bonn or Munich;
Law with Italian Law, with 2 students going to the University of Siena;
Law with Spanish Law, with 4 students going to the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona;
Law with European Law, with 4 students going to the University of Leiden.
The Institute administers the Course 2 programme, including the provision of preparatory teaching in foreign law and languages and keeping in contact with the academic directors and the administrators of the exchange programmes in our partner universities. The Law Faculty’s Academic Director of Undergraduate Exchange Programmes is a Deputy Director of the Institute, and the day-to-day administration of the exchange programmes is undertaken by the Administrator of the Institute.
48 Within this framework, the Institute also provides a focus and support network for the students coming to Oxford from our partner universities under the exchange agreements. These students are registered for the one-year Diploma in Legal Studies programme.
With up to 35 incoming and 35 outgoing students each year, Course 2 is the largest undergraduate exchange programme in the University and it remains one of the success stories of the Institute. Its graduates are highly sought after by law firms and other employers who appreciate their linguistic skills, their experience abroad and the teaching they receive in Oxford. There are, of course, great uncertainties at present about the future of the UK’s participation in the Erasmus+ scheme in light of the impending withdrawal of the UK from the EU. However, none of the exchange agreements with our European partners formally depends on Erasmus+ membership, and we remain fully committed to Course 2.
Below are reports from two students about their experiences in Oxford and Siena respectively.
A Year in Oxford Victor Schippers, University of Leiden (Diploma in Legal Studies, 2018-19)
The Diploma in Legal Studies was the fourth and final year of my undergraduate degree. I look back at a year full of friendship, academic growth and amazing experiences.
Most importantly, I did not imagine I would return to the Netherlands with such a vast amount of new legal knowledge and skill. Surprisingly, in many aspects the English common law and the Dutch civilian system turned out to be not very different. In both countries, lawyers face the same factual problems, and the law tends to reach similar outcomes. However, the process of reaching those outcomes is where I noticed the most divergence. Judges squabbling in their dicta on how to approach a relatively minor legal question, was a new phenomenon to me, and made long nights in the library worthwhile. The approach to studying the law, with endless reading lists culminating in an intense tutorial session was new to me as well. It was this aspect that was most rewarding, because it gave such an individual responsibility. Hidden beyond that responsibility lies a valuable freedom to summarise the law, formulate your own arguments and find ways to criticise judgments, without a clear-cut model answer. This process sharpened my mind like it had never been sharpened before.
Luckily, Oxford does live up to the cliché of work hard, play hard. The city, with its many pubs and cafes dotted around the centre, formed the perfect decor to foster old friendships and forge new ones. Most of these friendships were created in the Trinity College MCR, a place full of brilliant and beautiful people. It still amazes me how this diverse little community grew over the year, with its people from all over the world and the different academic and cultural backgrounds. Time and time again, the physical room of the MCR turned out to be a springboard into exciting adventures, such as club nights, galas and artistic get-togethers. The memories and contacts made in college will last a lifetime.
49 In terms of societies, I explored new hobbies too. At the fresher’s fair at the beginning the year, I felt somewhat like a celebrity, jotting down my signature on so many pieces of paper. Having signed up for such a range of societies, I ended up having to narrow it down. I regularly went to Law Society events, participated at the Oxford Union’s intervarsity debating competition, and played rugby for the college team. This low threshold to the many clubs and societies the University is rich in, made it really easy to explore new interests.
Term time can be an hectic mix of academic commitments, society events, and sports, but I absolutely enjoyed every single day of my year in Oxford
A Year in Siena Bruno Ligas-Rucinski, Christ Church (3rd Year Law with Law Studies in Europe)
The third year of my law degree was spent at the University of Siena in Italy. It is easy to view law as a collection of discrete topics. Studying private, public and EU law from the perspective of a different legal order both reinforced my understanding of the central questions which shape law and dismantled my assumptions as to how law should be organised. For example, Italy’s penal jurisprudence is similarly shaped by its concerns with finding culpability and misconduct. Yet, where in the UK the principles and offenses are buried in centuries of case law and statutes, Italy’s Penal Code separates, and clearly defines them. In addition, studying Italian constitutional law helped me better understand the nature of the UK’s unwritten constitution. Analysing Italy’s codified approach has also informed my understanding of the pluralist/constitutionalist debates in EU law.
With regards to my Italian, I thought I was fluent, until I started studying Italian law. Nonetheless, I quickly improved as the exams are predominantly oral. This forced me to be precise, citing the relevant codes, and to think on my feet. I’m sure these skills will be useful in debates and in practice. Furthermore, despite its small size, Siena is an international hub. I exchanged stories with Chechnyan, Cuban and Chilean students, I learnt about Spain’s legal system from a doctoral researcher there and did my best to make my French less rusty.
Finally, the comparatively lighter workload gave me the opportunity to explore as many internships as possible. I worked in Allen & Overy’s Milan office, and at several law firms and Chambers in London. I would not have been able to learn as much about the subject or industry had I not had the year abroad. Ultimately, these opportunities have renewed my passion for my legal studies, and I am excited to apply all that I’ve learnt.
50 The 11th Oxford French Law Moot 11 March 2019
“Remember Gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!” Winston Churchill
A hair salon, lots of champagne bottles, a heat wave in Paris and a poorly maintained attic constituted the main elements of the case study given in 2019 to the ambitious students that thought it would be a good idea to participate in the French Law Moot Court. The increased difficulty of the case, combining a plethora of substantive and procedural issues, perhaps made them rethink that idea!
To describe the day of the French Law Moot Court as an intense one would be an understatement. Sixteen teams of undergraduate students accompanied by their mentors came to Oxford determined to prove to the judges that their client was right and thus to claim the prestigious prizes of the competition. As with every successful lawyer who can argue both sides of the case, the teams had to prepare meticulously the defence for both the claimant and the defendant with the final decision on the side to de argued being determined by a draw.
The teams were divided into groups of four, and for the first round, each team had to argue their case against two other teams of the same group. At the beginning, the students were mostly sticking to their notes, the margins of creativity emerging only in reply to the judges’ questions. The team from the University of Oxford had to argue the case of the plaintiff against the extremely well-prepared teams representing Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Cologne.
From each group of four, only one team would proceed to the semi-finals. Waiting for the results of the judges, some participants were relaxing, while some others, mimicking real-life
51 trials, were enriching their defence by drawing on their opponents’ arguments. The team of the University of Oxford passed the first challenge of four with flying colours and was ready to proceed to the semi-finals.
At the semi-finals, the difference from the first round of the Moot Court was more than evident. The teams were now better prepared for the questions of the judges but, in an effort to spot the weaknesses in the strategy followed by each team, the latter were equally more persistent with their questions. The team of the host University argued their case against Queen Mary University London in a heated semi-final in which both sides argued in the most detailed way.
The final results were out. The University of Oxford reached, after many years of absence, the final of the French Law Moot Court. However, between the team of Oxford and final victory stood a legendary team from King’s College London, twice the winner of the Moot Court. Both teams had, in addition to presenting their case and replying to the judges’ questions, to The winning team from the University of Oxford receiving their dismantle their opponents’ prizes from representatives of Gide Loyrette Nouel arguments. Oxford’s team not only replied to all the pressing questions of the panel of judges, but also did it in a spontaneous way, reminding us that spontaneity is not always a sign of weakness.
As in real-life trials, the case may be won not by the one that argues it better, but by the one that makes the judges laugh. The University of Oxford wins the 2019 edition of the French Law Moot Court!
Among the prizes, la source du mal, Champagne!
Teams taking part in this year’s Moot represented the University of Birmingham, Boston College, University of Bristol, University of Cairo, University of Cologne, University of Essex, University of Florence, Galatasaray University, Humboldt University Berlin, King’s College London, a joint team from the Complutense University Madrid and Cornell University, Oxford University, Queen Mary University of London, Trinity College Dublin, University College London and University of Warwick.
The final of the Moot was judged by Jean-Guy Huglo (Doyen of the Social Chamber of the French Supreme Court and President of the Judges), Saadia Bhatty (Gide Loyrette Nouel LLP), Marie Goré (University of Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas), Judith Heinich (University of Burgundy) and François-Xavier Lucas (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne).
The Moot is sponsored by Gide Loyrette Nouel and supported by the Association Henri Capitant and the Société de Législation Comparée.
Olga Giakouminaki Maison Française Oxford Visiting Student
52 Conferences and Seminars
The Future of Arbitration in Europe 26-27 October 2018
This two-day conference was organised by Dr Andreas von Goldbeck together with Axel Calissendorff and Professor Jan Kleineman of the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law, and the Institute of European and Comparative Law.
The first session was devoted to the relationship between arbitration and EU law generally. In light of recent rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), the session discussed issues such as the autonomy of the EU legal order and the inadmissibility of referrals from arbitral tribunals to the ECJ.
The second session discussed the future impact of the ECJ’s Achmea ruling on investor-state arbitration in Europe and the EU. The most relevant questions here were the compatibility of bilateral investment protection agreements between EU Member States (so-called intra-EU BITs) with the autonomy of Union law and the exclusive power of the ECJ to interpret EU law. Among others, these questions were discussed: What will be ways to solve investor-state disputes in compliance with EU law? Will investor-state disputes be referred to national courts or other bodies or even to arbitration outside of the EU? To what extent would awards rendered in investor-state arbitration outside the EU be recognised and enforceable?
The third session featured a general discussion of the future of arbitration in Europe and examined current trends and developments.
Speakers: John Beechey (BeecheyArbitration), Jan Kleineman (Stockholm), Axel Calissendorff (Calissendorff Swarting), Andreas von Goldbeck (Stockholm Centre and Oxford), George Bermann (Columbia Law School), Ulf Bernitz (Stockholm and Oxford), Melchior Wathelet (Court of Justice of the EU), Robin Oldenstam (Mannheimer Swartling), Lucy Reed (National University of Singapore), Giuditta Cordero-Moss (Oslo), Pascalis Paschalidis (Court of Justice of the EU), Annette Magnusson (Stockholm Chamber of Commerce), Kaj Hobér (Stockholm Chamber of Commerce), Lord Hoffmann (Oxford), Carita Wallgren-Lindholm (ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR), Rolf Trittmann (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer/Goethe University), Stavros Brekoulakis (Queen Mary London), Ewan McKendrick (Oxford), Claes Lundblad (Lundblad Zettermarck)
53 Director’s Visit to Stockholm 22-23 January 2019
In January 2019, the Director of the Institute, Professor Birke Häcker, visited Stockholm in order to help select the Stockholm Centre Oxford Fellowship for the academic year 2019-20. As many readers will be aware, the IECL has a longstanding and very fruitful academic exchange and collaboration with the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law at Stockholm University, of which the Fellowship is a central aspect. It has become a tradition in recent years for the Institute Director to travel to Stockholm for the selection meeting and at the same time to offer a guest seminar.
On this occasion, Professor Häcker was invited to give two presentations. On 22 January, she addressed a Faculty Seminar at the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law on the topic of how, in many legal systems, the mechanisms and understanding of property transfer mechanisms shape private law more broadly. Comparing English, French, German and Austrian law, she outlined the differences between “causal” and “abstract” transfer systems (ie systems in which the validity of a conveyance either depends or does not depend on the validity of the underlying obligation) and explained how these impact on and interact with the rules on contractual risk allocation, protection in insolvency, the regime governing rescission of contract, unjust(ified) enrichment and the principles of bona fide purchase. The topic was of particular interest in Stockholm since Swedish law follows a so-called “functional” approach, resolving each conflict of interest situation on its own terms, without reference to any general concept of when, how and why exactly “property” passes.
On 23 January, Mannheimer Swartling, the largest law firm in the Nordic countries, hosted a special seminar marking “Seven Years with the Stockholm Centre Oxford Fellowship”. This event, to which a number of current or former IECL visitors and affiliates contributed, brought together the various stakeholders in the Oxford/Stockholm cooperation, both at the Stockholm Law Faculty and from contributing and funding organisations. After an introduction by Dr André Andersson (Board Member of the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law and Partner at Mannheimer Swartling), a panel consisting of Professor Jan Kleinemann (Stockholm University and Stockholm Centre of Commercial Law), Professor Teresa Simon-Almendal (Vice Dean of the Stockholm Law Faculty) and Professor Häcker discussed the background and importance of the Oxford-Stockholm cooperation. A particular concern was the potential impact of “Brexit”, but the panel agreed that this was a challenge to be overcome rather than an obstacle. A number of former Stockholm Centre Oxford Fellows and others who had first-hand knowledge of the Oxford-Stockholm cooperation then shared their personal experiences with the audience, emphasising the fact that the exchange programme provided them with an academic “home from home”. The afternoon seminar concluded with a keynote address by Professor Häcker on recent “Developments, Trends and Perspectives in European Contract Law”.
54 “English Law in the 21st Century: A Tale of Two Traditions” – Inaugural Lecture 15 February 2019
On 15 February 2019, the Director of the Institute, Professor Birke Häcker, delivered her Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Comparative Law in the splendid surroundings of the Divinity School in the Old Bodleian Library. The event was conjoined with the immediately preceding Inaugural Lecture of Professor Wolfgang Ernst, Regius Professor of Civil Law and Research Fellow at the IECL, who spoke about “Statutory Interpretation in Roman Law”.
In her lecture, Professor Häcker analysed the position and evolution of English law within two very different relationships: being historically – on the one hand – the European legal order that stood apart from the continental civilian tradition, and – on the other – the “parent” legal order of common law systems around the world. She demonstrated that, as a result of developments over (roughly) the past half century, there had been profound changes in both of these relationships. Her core argument was that we ought to recognise the new reality and to redefine the role of English law. Comparative scholarship had a valuable contribution to make to this recalibration process.
With regard to continental European systems, Professor Häcker drew attention to the fact that English law today commanded much greater (direct and indirect) influence in continental Europe than it did at the start of the 20th century. But it was the influence the other way which had been truly transformative in certain fields. In particular, the impact of EC/EU membership and the incorporation at the domestic level of the European Convention of Human Rights through the Human Rights Act 1998 had left profound marks on the structure of legal discourse and thinking in the UK (for instance, through the so-called “proportionality” inquiry which today pervades large parts of public law).
In respect of English law’s relationship with “offspring” jurisdictions, Professor Häcker traced the story of the common law from its worldwide spread during the colonial era to the now ever-increasing divergence of legal orders such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore in the wake of decolonisation and the dwindling importance of the Privy Council as a final arbiter. She questioned whether and to what extent English law still commanded the “leadership” role it ascribed to itself. She further suggested that it was time openly to acknowledge the exchange of ideas and interaction between different common law systems as a true – albeit a very special – form of comparative law: “comparative common law”. This, she argued, required the traditional canon of comparative law methodology to be revised so as to be made serviceable to the common law context and its peculiarities, while at the same time preserving its valuable lessons. By way of laying the foundations for a tailor-made “comparative common law” methodology, she proposed a number of modifications to core tenets of the mainstream “functional” approach.
Pondering the (potential) impact of Brexit, Professor Häcker challenged the idea that European influences had “corrupted” the purity of the English common law and that withdrawing from the EU would somehow turn back the clock and reinstate English law’s former primacy amongst common law systems. She regarded the Europe-orientation of English law not so much as an occasion for regret, but instead as an opportunity to develop its unique “gateway” position: as a system grounded firmly in the common law camp (hence not mixed), yet with a distinctly European flavour. In her view, English lawyers need to “make the most of the fact that their legal system faces both ways”. This, she concluded, “enables [English law and English lawyers] to see through two lenses. And when you look at the map of the law through two different lenses, you begin to see it in 3D.”
55 Brexit and the EU: Legal and Institutional Perspectives 8 March 2019
An initiative by Professor Stephen Weatherill, this event was organised by the convenors of the EU Law Discussion Group (EULDG), Konstantinos Sidiropoulos, Felix Pflücke and Liana Japaridze. The event was supported by the IECL and was made possible through generous support from Monckton Chambers. The event was the second in the annual Symposium series organised by the EULDG. The principal objective was to provide more clarity regarding the political, economic and legal standing of both the EU and the UK during the then approaching (first) Brexit deadline, as well as further elaborating on the perspectives of both parties regarding the potential implication of the former.
The symposium brought together some of the most prominent academics and practitioners who exchanged their legal perspectives on Brexit. The discussion took place in two panels. The first panel, where the legal and economic challenges of Brexit were analysed, was chaired by Professor Sir David Edward QC. Professor Paul Craig initiated the discussion by analysing the political, economic and legal aspects of the UK Withdrawal Agreement and providing overview about the future patterns of UK’s Trade Relations. Next, Tim Ward QC from Monckton Chambers provided a practitioner’s perspective on competition law in the post-Brexit UK. Following this, Rachel Brandenburger from Hogan Lovells US LLP gave an overview of possible paths for the UK’s international cooperation in the area of competition law. Finally, Professor John Temple Lang from Trinity College Dublin elaborated on the potential impact of Brexit on the free movement of services within the Internal Market.
In the second panel, chaired by Professor Sir Francis Jacobs QC, the panellists analysed the institutional, political, and administrative challenges of Brexit. First, Professor Pablo Ibanez Colomo from the London School of Economics evaluated the ways for post-Brexit cooperation in the area of State Aid. Next, Dr Joseph Tomlinson and Alexandra Sinclair from King’s College London and Public Law Project provided a detailed analysis regarding the major patterns in administrative responses to Brexit. This evaluation was followed by a speech from Professor Hafstein Kristjansson, an adjunct professor at the University of Oxford and University of Iceland, regarding post-Brexit UK-EU trade relationships and the suitability of the EEA model for the latter. Finally, the panel was concluded by Professor Stefan Enchelmaier’s evaluation of “European” Ltds and the problems they might face in the wake of Brexit. The symposium concluded with the extremely interesting speech by Professor Stephen Weatherill, who summarised principal political, economic and legal problems arising from Brexit.
The symposium was a golden opportunity for leading experts to present their views and discuss them with their peers and students. We were delighted to welcome such a great group of speakers, the discussion was interesting and intense, and those attending enjoyed it. The common theme was that that Brexit was detrimental in multiple ways. However, these detriments could be more or less mitigated, depending on the form UK-EU relationship would take in the future. Thus, although the overall spirit of the Symposium was gloomy, the participants maintained (and continue to maintain) faith in improved future relations between the UK and EU, with the hope that this improvement will benefit all European states and citizens.
Liana Japaridze (Somerville College)
56 The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Member States 22-23 March 2019
December 2019 will mark the 10th anniversary of the EU Charter becoming binding part of primary law: no longer a mere source of inspiration, not just a non-binding embodiment of the general principles developed in the case law of the Court of Justice, but a legally enforceable yardstick for judicial review and conforming interpretation.
The development and role of the Charter has been discussed extensively at the European level. But what is going on in the Member States? How, in what situations and to what extent, and how often is the EU Charter actually being applied by domestic authorities, in particular by the national courts?
Ten years later, the time thus appeared ripe to revisit and to assess comparatively the issue of the genuine life of the EU Charter in the Member States. A two-day conference hosted jointly by the Institute of European and Comparative Law and the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, with additional financial support from the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, endeavoured to map the ground, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
How often and in particular by which actors is the EU Charter invoked on the national level, zooming in particular on the practice of national courts? In what type of situations is it invoked? Are national courts in reality able to reasonably assess what situations are within the scope of EU law, thus rendering the Charter applicable? Do they in fact care? Is it problematic if they don’t? Has the approach of national constitutional courts to EU law in general and to EU fundamental rights law in particular changed following the entry into force of the Charter? Has the Charter impacted on the legal culture and the availability of rights in some countries? Has it been used by all the actors in the fundamental rights landscape of the Member States? Has that use been changing the relationships between these actors? What sort of interplay does the Charter generate with the national bill of rights and the European Convention? Have there been any changes in the interpretation of either of the two instruments or any specific rights concerned therein following the entry into force of the Charter? On the whole, is the life with the Charter on the national level a case of harmonious “praktische Konkordanz” or rather a messy “ménage”?
This extensive list of questions was tackled by judges, practitioners, academics and policy makers from across the Union. President Koen Lenaerts of the Court of Justice and Siofra O’Leary of the European Court of Human Rights set the scene in an opening panel chaired by Lady Arden of the UK Supreme Court, before a series of roundtables delved into a detailed comparison of different substantive and procedural rights, their limitations and balancing, and a concluding session to explore national institutions, structures, and particularities. Based on these contributions, two concluding panels reflected on the Charter’s impact and reach, as well as the future outlook.
The proceedings of the conference will be published in early 2020 by Hart Publishing as the sixth volume in the EU Law in the Member States series, jointly edited by Jeremias Adams- Prassl and Michal Bobek. The convenors were, as ever, particularly grateful to Jenny Dix for all her help in organising and running an excellent event!
57 Speakers: Koen Lenaerts (Court of Justice of the European Union), Siofra O’Leary (European Court of Human Rights), Gabriel N. Toggenburg (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights), Orla Lynskey (London School of Economics), Catherine Barnard (Cambridge), Kathleen Gutman (Court of Justice), Magdalena Ličková (Court of Justice), Sara Iglesias Sanchez (Court of Justice), Maja Brkan and Šejla Imamović (Maastricht), François-Xavier Millet (Court of Justice), Jeremias Adams-Prassl (Oxford), Michal Bobek (Court of Justice), David Reichel (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights), Clara Rauchegger (Innsbruck), Adam Łazowski (Westminster), Armin von Bogdandy and Luke Dimitrios Spieker (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law), Anneli Albi (Kent), Bruno De Witte (European University Institute), Alexander Somek (Vienna) National Rapporteurs: Christopher Grabenwarter (Austrian Constitutional Court) and Christine Pesendorfer (Austrian Federal Chancellery) (Austria); Sarah Lambrecht (Belgian Constitutional Court) (Belgium); Alexandre Kornezov (General Court of the EU) (Bulgaria); Goran Selanec (Croatian Constitutional Court) (Croatia); Pavel Molek (Czech Supreme Administrative Court). Adam Blisa and Katarina Šipulová (Masaryk) (Czech Republic and Slovakia); Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen (Paris 1) (France); Mattias Wendel (Bielefeld) (Germany); Antal Berkes (Manchester), András Jakab (Salzburg) and Pal Sonnevent (ELTE Budapest) (Hungary); Gerard Hogan (Court of Justice) (Ireland); Silvana Sciarra (Italian Constitutional Court) and Angelo Jr Golia (Max Planck Institute Heidelberg) (Italy); Corinna Wissels and Aniel Pahladsingh (Dutch Council of State) (The Netherlands); Krystyna Kowalik Banczyk (General Court of the EU) (Poland); Gonçalo de Almeida Ribeiro (Portuguese Constitutional Court) and Patricia Fragoso Martins (Catholic University of Portugal) (Portugal); Matej Acetto (Slovenia Constitutional Court) (Slovenia); Daniel Sarmiento (Uria Mendenez, Madrid) (Spain); Mia Rönnmar (Lund) (Sweden); Lady Mary Arden (Supreme Court) and Takis Tridimas (King’s College London) (UK)
58 Contractual Non-Performance in a Comparative Context 22-23 March 2019
This was the second workshop bringing together a high calibre team of authors engaged in creating an exciting new book series entitled “Contract Laws in a Comparative Context”. The aim is to present the national contract law of different jurisdictions in a way that makes it accessible to lawyers from other jurisdictions and fosters comparative discourse, while at the same remaining true to each legal system on its own terms. The books are intended as entirely self-standing “inside” accounts of national contract law, yet the series as a whole will amount to much more than a mere sum of its component parts by making possible or facilitating comparisons across systems.
The workshop was organised by the Institute’s Director, Professor Birke Häcker, and Professor Hugh Beale, a Visiting Research Fellow at the IECL, who are also acting as joint series editors. It followed up a first author meeting in March 2018 (see picture) which had set itself the goal of finding a suitable common structure which all books in the series will adhere to. While the first workshop, entitled “Comparative Contract Law: Substance, Structure and Context” set out to identify in the abstract a presentational scheme that allows jurisdictional divides to be bridged, the second workshop (“Contractual Non-Performance in a Comparative Context”) sought to establish by reference to the concrete topic of contractual non-performance whether the proposed scheme actually succeeds in practice. It enabled participants to raise and discuss problems they had encountered in implementing the agreed structure and thereby led to its fine-tuning and significant improvement.
The small team of authors who have worked closely with the series editors and with one another to settle the common structure will over the next two years produce a core of books on the contract law of China, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, with other jurisdictions to follow their model in due course. In alphabetical order, the authors are Professors Luisa Antoniolli (University of Trento), Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson (French Conseil d’État and until recently Professor at the University of Paris 2 Panthéon- Assas), Samuel Fulli-Lemaire (University of Strasbourg), Beatriz Gregoraci (Autonomous University of Madrid), Roel van Leuken (Gerechtshof Arnhem-Leeuwarden), Qiao Liu (University of Queensland and Xi’an Jiaotong University), Sonja Meier (University of Freiburg), Christina Ramberg (Stockholm University) and Anna Veneziano (UNIDROIT and University of Teramo). The editors and authors were particularly pleased that the publishers of the prospective series, Intersentia, took such an interest in the workshops, with Ann- Christin Maak and Richard Hart as representatives not only attending, but joining the substantive discussions and providing a great deal of information on the technicalities as well as possibilities of production that will help bring the project to fruition.
59 The Fifteenth Trends in Retail Competition Symposium. Private Labels, Brands and Competition Policy 24 May 2019
This year’s symposium was on the theme “Evolving Competition Dynamics: the Interface between Competition Policy, Brands and Retailers”. This is a fast- changing world in terms of consumer trends, the structure of markets and the tools available to companies with which to compete, such as data and artificial intelligence. Both the nature and speed of these changes present challenges for suppliers as well as distributors. Meanwhile, some of the old challenges continue, albeit sometimes in different forms.
In this changing world, participants discussed the extent to which competition policy ensures that shoppers continue to face a strong array of choice, including the ability to understand and exercise that choice, to enjoy the best value and to have access to ever better products and services. The symposium explored some of the key forces affecting competition for branded suppliers and distributors, both in bricks-and-mortar and digital worlds. Buyer power, already found under some circumstances to harm consumer choice, range and quality, remains one of the continuing themes and the programme explored recent retail merger analysis (including the final report on the Asda/Sainsbury merger), the effect of buying alliances and the efficacy of existing remedies. The forthcoming review by the European Commission of the Vertical Exemption Block Regulation presented an opportunity to explore the implications for branded suppliers and retailers and to highlight those areas where different approaches may be warranted. Meanwhile the digital world continues to grow in terms of scale and importance. The programme explored the nature of platform power, access to competitors’ commercially sensitive information and the way in which products and information are presented to shoppers. A recent report from the UK’s Digital Competition Expert Panel suggested that competition concerns may arise in some areas. The symposium discussed how these could best be approached and what the potential remedies might be.
The symposium was sponsored by Bristows LLP.
Speakers: Ulf Bernitz (Oxford and Stockholm), Mat Hughes (Alix Partners), Andrew Taylor (Aldwych Partners), Michael Bauer (CMS), Bent Sofus Tranoy (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences and Kristiania University College), Rona Bar-Isaac (Addleshaw Goddard), Fabian Kaiser (DG Competition, European Commission), Simon Holmes (Competition Appeal Tribunal), Alessandro Tajana (Johnson & Johnson), Thomas Graf (Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton), Emma Trogen (Cosmetics Europe), Reto Batzel (METRO AG), Matthias Eisenbarth (AB InBev), Agustin Reyna (BEUC), Ariel Ezrachi (Oxford), Hal Singer (Econ One Research, USA), Stefan Hunt (Competition and Markets Authority), Alec Burnside (Dechert LLP), Hal Singer (Econ One Research), Oliver Bethell (Google)
60 Doctoral Retreat for Stockholm Students 10-12 June
The Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice (SCILJ) and the IECL co-organised an intensive doctoral retreat on the subject of ‘Critical Research in Public International Law’. This is the fourth time the annual retreat has been held and the first time it has been held outside Sweden (the previous three were held in Gimo). This year the special guest was Professor Sundhya Pahuja from Melbourne University, Australia. The participants included 12 doctoral students, four from Stockholm University, four from University of Oxford, one each from Manchester University, Peking University, Gothenburg University and Helsinki University. The retreat included discussion of papers that all participants had to submit beforehand, each paper had two assigned commentators and the participants were all very satisfied with the discussions during the retreat. The content and practicalities of the event were organised by Professor Pål Wrange, Professor Mark Klamberg and doctoral student Nikola Hajdin with the kind support of Professor Birke Häcker and IECL Administrator Jenny Dix.
Mark Klamberg (Stockholm Centre-Oxford Fellow 2018-19)
Antitrust Enforcement Symposium, 29-30 June 2019
The two-day event, held in Pembroke College in association with the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, brought together leading academics, competition officials, policy makers and practitioners, for a stimulating, in-depth discussion of the law, economics and policy of antitrust enforcement. The meeting included presentations of selected papers as well as open informal discussion. The aim of the symposium was to explore, in a candid atmosphere, the scope and limit of national enforcement and international cooperation, and to define current and anticipate future issues in antitrust law enforcement. The Symposium was supported by Bates White Economic Consulting, E.CA Economics, Sidley Austin, and Slaughter and May.
Speakers: Frederic Jenny (OECD), Michael Grenfell (CMA), Hans Friederiszick (E.Ca Economics), Pablo Ibáñez Colomo (London School of Economics), Agustin Reyna (BEUC), Ioannis Lianos (University College London), Adi Ayal (Bar Ilan), Cristina Caffarra (CRA), Tim Lamb (Facebook), Kristina Nordlander (Sidley), Andreas Mundt (Bundeskartellamt), William Kovacic (CMA/George Washington), Wolfgang Kerber (Marburg), Oliver Bethell and Gavin Baird (Google), Heike Schweitzer (Humboldt), Barak Orbach (Arizona), Reiko Aoki (Japan Fair Trade Commission), Barry Lynn (Open Markets Institute), Maurice Stucke (Konkurrenz Group), Johannes Laitenberg (European Commission), Christine Wilson (FTC), Margarida Matos Rosa (Autoridade da Concorrencia), Cyril Ritter (European Commission), Barry Rodger (Strathclyde), Pablo Figueroa (Garrido), Nicholas Levy (CGSH), Rachel Brandenburger (Oxford), Antonio Capobianco (OECD), Stephen Kinsella (Sidley), Daniel Sokol (Florida)
61 Transplanting the EU Competition Framework – Trends and Challenges: Eastern Europe 19-21 September 2019
This conference was made possible by the extremely generous support of Professor Stephen Weatherill as well as Somerville College Catherine Hughes Fund and the Oxford University Georgian Society. It was initiated and organised by the convenor of the EULDG, Liana Japaridze, with the assistance of the IECL.
The objective of the conference was to bring together scholars of different generations whose research interests focus on the transposition of the EU Competition Framework outside its borders. The focus was on the three developing and formerly planned economies of the Eastern Partnership (EaP): Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. In recent years, these countries have signed so called “New Generation” Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTAs) with the EU. As a result, the trading possibilities have been amplified in the EU-EaP area, promising the EU the benefits of intensified trade relations with close neighbours and opening prospects of significant economic developments for the focus countries. Successful transplantation of the EU competition framework plays a key role in the realisation of these agreements, since the former is one of the principal guarantees of undistorted trade. Meanwhile, despite numerous bilateral frameworks of best practice exchange, there seems to be a general lack of a scholarly network where experts from both the EU and the EaP area can meet and discuss solutions to the challenges faced in the process of transplanting the EU competition framework into the EaP jurisdictions. The conference was designed to remedy this gap.
In order to achieve its objective, the conference brought together a mix of 16 young and experienced scholars researching the topic of the EU trade relations within the three EaP states and the role of competition framework in advancing this process. In this respect, it served as a platform for experience-sharing regarding the effective competition framework building in these three states on the basis of the EU’s best practices. The conference included three expert panels where senior scholars provided their viewpoints regarding the effective transposition of the EU competition framework in the EaP states. In addition, seven junior scholars (mainly doctoral students) were able to present their ongoing research and receive detailed feedback and suggestions regarding the further development of their work.
The conference consisted of three parts, devoted to (1) the impact of the EU competition policy on the trade within its boundaries and beyond; (2) the critical analysis of competition frameworks in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine; (3) an overview of competition framework development in selected EU and non-EU states in order to draw lessons for the EaP states.
The first part was opened by an expert panel discussing the intersections of the Internal Market, external trade and competition policies of the EU. Within the panel, Professor Stephen Weatherill (Oxford) covered in detail the impact of the competition framework on the EU Internal Market development, while Professor Erika Szyszczak (Sussex) discussed the role of competition law in the EU’s external trade relations and outlined principle challenges of making the EU competition law transplant work effectively in the EaP states. The panel was followed by the first doctoral presentation from Lena Hornkohl (Heidelberg) analysing the EU’s impact on competition framework development in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
62 The second day of the conference, devoted to the critical analysis of competition frameworks in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, was opened by Zinaida Chkhaidze (Competition Agency of Georgia), who discussed the key changes included in the new Draft Law on Competition, currently under discussion in the Parliament of Georgia. Following this, two doctoral presentations addressed the Georgian competition framework in detail: Liana Japaridze (Oxford) elaborated on the optimisation of Georgia’s competition framework objectives on the basis of the relevant EU experience, and Nika Sergia (New Vision University, Georgia) addressed the issue of anticompetitive agreements concluded by the indirect forms of contact and provided peculiar examples from Georgian competition enforcement practice. The morning session concluded with a doctoral presentation by Dumitru Girdea (Competition Council of Moldova) who shared the Moldovan experience regarding detecting and regulating State Aid granted through fiscal measures.
The afternoon session commenced with an expert panel focusing on the Ukrainian experience. First, Professor Oksana Holovko-Havrysheva (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv) evaluated the intersections of Ukraine’s competition and consumer policies. Next, Professor Kseniia Smyrnova (Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University) discussed principal challenges of Ukraine’s competition framework in the process of legal approximation with the EU rules. Finally, Professor Pedro Caro de Sousa (OECD) shared his viewpoint regarding the principal challenges faced by Ukraine in the process of establishing strong competition enforcement. The panel was accompanied by two presentations from young scholars: Marina Reznichuk (Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University) offered a comparative analysis of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement’s competition chapter vis-à- vis similar chapters in the EU-Moldova and EU-Georgia AAs, while Barbora Slaba (College of Europe) elaborated on the influence of the EU on the development of Ukraine’s framework.
The final day of the conference was devoted to providing an overview of competition framework developments in selected EU and non-EU states in order to draw lessons for the EaP states. It started with an expert panel: Professor Marek Martyniszyn (Queen’s University Belfast) talked about the relevant Polish experience in terms of developing strong enforcement framework, Professor Jasminka Pecotic Kaufman (Zagreb) discussed the relevant Croatian experience in this respect, and Professor Dina Waked (Science Po) shared the results of her research regarding the characteristics of competition enforcement regimes in developing countries. The event was concluded by a joint presentation of Liana Japaridze (Oxford) and Ketevan Zukakisvhili (EU TA Project to Georgia), who presented their novel idea of amplifying ECN+ as a tool of experience sharing between the EU and EaP states, in order to support the effective competition enforcement in the latter.
The conference revealed several key issues regarding the transposition of EU competition framework in the EaP countries, namely: The EU framework can only be used as a blueprint and requires substantive adjustment to the peculiarities of respective national markets. The establishment of effective competition frameworks is a time and resource- consuming process, requiring constant alertness from national enforcers, a good knowledge of respective markets and a high level of cooperation among different national players. Continuous support and experience-sharing from the EU is vital in the process of competition building in the EaP jurisdictions.
Although many problems were discussed, the overall message of the conference was positive: Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine are on the right track in the process of building their respective competition frameworks. The conference was a wonderful occasion for building a network amongst different generations of scholars. The organisers hope that this will continue and deepen in the future. Liana Japaridze (Somerville College)
63 n addition to the above, members of the Institute convene and administer the meetings of the Comparative Law Discussion Group, the EU Law Discussion Group and the IECL ILunchtime Seminar Series. The following meetings were held in 2018-19:
Comparative Law Discussion Group
Reinhard Zimmermann (Max Planck Institute Seeing the Wood for the Trees – the New for Comparative and International Private Commentaries on European Contract Laws Law, Hamburg)
How did the Law Become Positive (organised jointly with the Foundations of Law and Nils Jansen (University of Münster) Constitutional Government)
The Future of Causa in Italian Law Elena Bargelli (University of Pisa)
‘[T]ime is not to run […] in Favour of the Thief’ – or Should it? A Comparative Analysis of the Erik Röder (Max Planck Institute for Tax Law Effects of the Passage of Time on Proprietary and Public Finance) Claims to Stolen Chattels
The Compensation of Non-Pecuniary Loss in Jonas Knetsch (Université Jean-Monnet Saint Europe: Rethinking the Boundaries of Tort Law Étienne)
Liability Regimes in the Internet of Things Francesco Mezzanotte (University of Rome 3)
Old Wine in New Bottles? A Comparative Susanne Zwirlein (Sernetz Schäfter and LMU Historical Analysis of Risk Allocation in Sales Munich) Contracts before Termination
EU Law Discussion Group
Why EU Law Claims Supremacy Justine Lindeboom (University of Groningen)
Mangold, Egenberger, and Smith v Meade: Stefan Enchelmaier (University of Oxford) Directo Effect’s New, Happy World of Haribo
Brexit, the Emerging Picture Paul Craig (University of Oxford)
Deference and the Evolution of EU Free Jan Zglinski (University of Oxford) Movement Law
Pluralism in European Private Law Vanessa Mak (University of Tilburg)
Transforming Membership? Citizenship, Identity, and the Problem of Belonging in Regional Integration Organisations Päivi Neuvonen (University of Helsinki) (organised jointly with the IECL Lunchtime Seminar Series)
The Material Constitution of the Euro: Austerity, Marco Goldoni (University of Glasgow) Central Bank Independence, Competitiveness
64 EU Law on Consumer Protection and the Quest for More Efficient Means of Consumer Antonios Karampatzos (University of Athens) Protection: the ‘Mandated-Choice Model’ at the Forefront
Environmental Protection through the Prism of Sanja Bogojevic (University of Oxford) Enlargement: Time for Reflection
The European Union and Deprivation of Liberty: Forced Movement and Fundamental Rights in an Leandro Mancano (University of Edinburgh) Area without Internal Frontiers
Václav Janeček (University of Oxford) and Data Extra Commercium Gianclaudio Malgieri (Free University of Brussels)
The Digital Market: Tinkering or Fundamental Claire Bury (EU Commission DG CONNECT) Overhaul
IECL Seminar Series
Liability for Standards Development in Paul Verbruggen (University of Tilburg) Comparative Perspective
Brexit, Regulatory Competition and the Giesela Rühl (Friedrich Schiller University Settlement of International Disputes Jena)
Private Enforcement of Competition Law: Follow-on Damages Claims and Access to Benedikt Freund (University of Zurich) Leniency Documents – a Swiss Perspective
Tribunals/Courts in England and Switzerland: a Beatrix Schibli (University of St Gallen) Comparative Perspective
Beyond the Gender Binary: Germany’s Path to a Konrad Duden (Max Planck Institute for Third Option Comparative and International Private Law)
Investment Funds’ Equity Holdings and EU Marco Corradi (University of Stockholm) Competition
The Limits of Judicial Power in England and Germany: a Comparative Methodological and Martin Brenncke (Aston Business School) Constitutional Perspective
Posting of Workers in the EU: Tension between the ‘Social’ and ‘Economic’ Dimension of the Internal Market Diana Niksova (University of Vienna) (organised jointly with the Labour Law Discussion Group)
Transforming Membership? Citizenship, Identity and the Problem of Belonging in Regional Integration Organisations Päivi Neuvonen (University of Helsinki) (organised jointly with the EU Law Discussion Group)
65 Conflicts of Interest as a Source of Biased Javier Miranzo Diaz (University of Castilla-La Decisions under EU Public Procurement Law: Mancha) Dealing with the Problem of Appearance
The Limits Imposed on Freedom of Testation by Andreas Humm (Max Planck Institute for Fundamental Values: Germany, England and Comparative and International Private Law) South Africa in Comparative Perspective
Content and Limits of the Right to Performance Quincy Lobach (University of Heidelberg) in English, German and Dutch Law
The International Chambers of the Paris Pierre-Baptiste Chipault (University of Commercial Court and Court of Appeal Oxford)
Thijmen Nuninga (University of Leiden) and Comparative Reflections on the Doctrine of Loss Caroline Kahn (University of Paris 2 of a Chance in Europe Panthéon-Assas)
The Regulation of Emergency Powers in France, Germany, the UK and Sweden with a Mark Klamberg (University of Stockholm) Comparative Historical and Ideological Outlook
Automated Decision Making in EU, UK and Liane Huttner (University of Paris 1 Panthéon- French Law Sorbonne)
The Administrative Archetype of Public Olga Giakouminaki (University of Paris 1 Contracts: from Vehicle to Obstacle for the Panthéon-Sorbonne) Emergence of the Internal Market
Laura Guffanti Pesenti (University Cattolica Vicarious Liability in Italy and the UK del Sacro Cuore Milan)
Environmental Torts: a Parallel between English Bruno Carra (University 7 de Setembro) and Brazilian Legal Systems
Resolving Home Ownership Disputes: a Comparative Review of English and Singapore Developments Yip Man (Singapore Management University) (organised jointly with the Property Law Discussion Group)
Controlling the Treaty Making Power in the UK: Mario Mendez (Queen Mary University of Insights for Reform from Comparative Law London)
Liability of Groups of Companies and Economic Successors in Competition Law: Reflections in Christian Kersting (University of Düsseldorf) Light of C-724/17 (Skanska)
Assignment of Claims by Operation of Law in Sotirios Kotronis (Aristotle University of European Private Law: Two Specific Questions Thessaloniki)
The Judicialization of Politics as a Matter of EU Law? From the Protection of the Individual Betül Kas (University of Amsterdam) towards the Management of Conflict
Eric Descheemaeker (University of A Stranger’s Journey through the Common Law Melbourne)
66 Retention of the Title: a Comparison between Antonio Legerén (A Coruña University) Spain and England
The Internal ‘Justice’ between Autonomy and Judicial Control of Sports Associations: a Antonio Marzocco (University of Campania) Difficult Balance
Major Trends in the State Duty to Protect Human Carmen Marquez-Carrasco (University of Rights against Corporate-Related Abuse Seville)
Special Guest Seminar
Conceptions and Definitions of Contract – Some Professor Guido Alpa (University of Rome Reflections on Comparative Law in Europe and Sapienza) the Evolution of European Private Law
67 International Institutional Links: Reports from Recent Participants
he IECL acts on behalf of the Faculty in engaging with other institutions outside Oxford for the purposes of research in the fields of European and comparative law. TSome of our international institutional links are designed to allow research visits by Oxford researchers to our partner institutions, generally for both senior scholars and graduate students (the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg; and the Law Faculties at the University of Seville and at the Lomonosov Moscow State University), but sometimes aimed particularly at graduates or early career academics (Alpa Scholarships, for the University of Rome Sapienza). We also welcome visitors to the Institute from each of these partner institutions under the terms of our agreement with them. Reports from some of this year’s participants in these schemes are set out below.
Exchange with the Max Planck Institute, Hamburg Leo Boonzaier, Balliol College
I spent the summer of 2019 at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, as part of the exchange programme between it and the IECL. I had a very memorable three months in Hamburg and would recommend the experience very highly to other DPhil students. For me there was the particular pleasure of renewing a past association, since in 2012 I spent eight months at the Institute as a visiting scholar and research assistant to Professor Reinhard Zimmermann, one of the Institute’s directors.
The Institute is the focal point of comparative private law in Europe. Its library is rightly celebrated for its singularly vast collection of comparative materials. Still more striking, however, is the bustle of guests drawn to the Institute from all over world. There are about 70 working in the library at any given time. That is in addition, of course, to the Institute’s own staff, comprising distinguished comparative lawyers from Germany and elsewhere. It was both interesting and energising to be a part of that research community.
This highly congenial work environment meant I was able to work productively on my DPhil thesis during the summer. The Institute is supremely well-run and full of diligent scholars. I was accommodated in the guest apartments immediately adjacent to the Institute, which makes life easy (and allows for regular head-clearing walks along the Alster, about 2 minutes away). Only Hamburg’s charms, and the opportunity for interesting lunches with other Institute guests, are likely to cause distraction.
I presented my DPhil research at the Institute’s weekly discussion group (as all guests are encouraged to do), which was helpful and fun. I also used my time in Germany to attend a conference at the Bucerius Law School (one of two law faculties within a few minutes’ walk or cycle from the Institute) and the biannual congress of the German Society for Comparative Law at the University of Greifswald. It was a joy to feel a part, for those three months, of continental Europe’s impressive community of private law scholars, and I think
68 others would benefit from it too - especially English lawyers, and others from the common- law world, by whom the civilian tradition is relatively under-appreciated. My ineptitude in the German language was only a minor hindrance.
I am grateful to the IECL and Professor Zimmermann for the opportunity to visit the Institute, which I hope to do again soon.
Exchange with the Max Planck Institute, Hamburg Konrad Duden and Andreas Humm, Max Planck Institute
We both had the opportunity to stay at the IECL for one term. The members of the IECL welcomed us with open arms and went to great lengths to make us feel welcome and included. A particular benefit of our stay at the IECL was the opportunity to engage with the Oxford academic community and to attend different events at Oxford University. Both within the IECL and outside, it was a great pleasure to discuss with various internationally renowned academics and to sit in on some of their courses. Another great advantage was the almost constant stream of inspiring talks offered at the IECL, the Law Faculty and the various colleges. The opportunity to give a talk in the IECL seminar gave us the possibility of presenting our research to an international audience whose comments were most welcome and enriching. This exposure was instrumental in shaping and advancing our respective projects. We were impressed by Oxford academic life and were able to discover different colleges, attend Evensongs or dinners at High Table. Our affiliation with St Catherine’s College made it possible to meet students and academics from different disciplines and to establish personal contacts by engaging in various social activities. Our stay at the IECL and in Oxford was a wonderful experience and of great benefit to our research.
Alpa Scholarship Roderic Kermarec, Exeter College
Last year, I was lucky enough to receive an Alpa scholarship, which allowed me to spend a two-months research stay at Sapienza University in Rome.
From the very first day onwards, I was warmly welcomed by Professor Guido Alpa, who spared no trouble making sure that my stay in Italy would be as productive and beneficial as possible. Sapienza provides an excellent working environment – the faculty is renowned for its vibrant international and European law community, and the various specialised libraries on campus provide all the required materials to pursue high-level research.
69 Throughout my stay, Professor Alpa gave me the opportunity to build invaluable contacts within and outside the faculty. He allowed to meet leading scholars in my field of studies, including Professor Merritt Fox from Columbia Law School, who was coincidentally giving a series of conferences in Rome at his invitation.
The University puts a particular emphasis on cross-departmental work in the fields of law, philosophy and economics. As a result, I quickly met a group of young academics with whom I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss my research, and thanks to whom I discovered Rome through the eyes of a local!
I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity to spend two months in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. My time in Italy was really productive and truly benefited my research; I look forward to going back to Rome very soon.
Exchange with the University of Seville Carmen Márquez-Carrasco, University of Seville
In the framework of the agreement between the Institute and the Law Faculty of the University of Seville I was academic visitor at the Institute during the summer 2019. My stay at the IECL was a unique opportunity to develop my project and to connect with members of the Institute, with other visiting researchers and academics and with members of the Law Faculty. From the very beginning of my academic visit I benefited from the full support and cooperation of Professor Birke Häcker, Director of the IECL, who made sure I had all the conditions to develop my work and provided me with invaluable contacts in the Law Faculty. The excellent resources of the Bodleian Law Library provided all the materials needed to conduct research and IECL members and fellow visitors were always ready to engage in lively discussions. I also used my time to meet scholars in the Oxford colleges and other institutions.
In addition to working on my research project, the IECL has a stimulating academic life that led me to participate in all its events and discussions. The environment provides the perfect place to conduct research on the multidisciplinary topic of my research. I had the pleasure to be invited by Professor Häcker to present my research findings on major trends in the State’s duty to protect human rights against corporate related abuse to the IECL lunchtime discussion group which was very well received by members of the Institute and visiting researchers alike.
This research stay has motivated me to prepare two publications on the State’s duty to protect human rights against transnational business activities in the supply chain, one in English and another one in Spanish.
I am incredibly grateful to Professor Häcker and the whole Institute of European and Comparative Law for making me feel so welcome as part of the Institute’s incredible research community.
70 Studies of the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law
tudies of the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law is the main forum for publication of the research pursued at the Institute. The series is published by Hart SPublishing Ltd. The Series Editor is Professor Birke Häcker and the Advisory Editors are Professor Stefan Enchelmaier, Professor Mark Freedland and Professor Stephen Weatherill. During the year the following volume has been published:
The 26th volume in the series is Discretion in EU Public Procurement Law edited by Sanja Bogojević, Xavier Groussot and Jörgen Hettne.
The EU public procurement regime has recently undergone an overhaul and now allows Member States and their contracting authorities to pursue strategic goals via public procurement, including environmental and social objectives. The extent to which such interests may be accommodated in the procurement process is ultimately determined by the broader legal context in which the EU public procurement regime exists, which raises pressing questions regarding the scope and limits of Member States’ discretion. This volume scrutinises these new legal acts – particularly Director 2014/24/EU – focusing on discretion and engaging with questions central to the public procurement regime against the EU legal backdrop, including internal market law and environment law, as well as law beyond the EU.
Forthcoming in the series are:
George Gerapetritis (2019) New Economic Constitutionalism in Europe
Jean-Sébastien Borghetti and Simon Whittaker (eds) (2019) French Civil Liability in Comparative Perspective
Esther van Schagen and Stephen Weatherill (eds) (2019) Better Regulation in EU Contract Law. The Fitness Check and the New Deal for Consumers
John Cartwright and Ángel M. López y López (eds) (2020) Property and Contract: Comparative Reflections on English and Spanish Law
71 Financial Supporters of the Institute
Panorama of the St Cross Building
he Institute is most grateful to all those who support its work in European and/or comparative law, or its associated activities in the student exchange programmes. The T current financial supporters are listed below.
support for the exchange of academic staff and graduate Professor Guido Alpa students between the Oxford Law Faculty and the University of Rome Sapienza
ongoing annual funding for the administration of the Law with Law Studies in Europe degree and the exchange programme, Clifford Chance LLP and for conferences and other events in European and/or comparative law
Gide Loyrette Nouel LLP funding for the annual Oxford French Law Moot
Ragnar Söderbergs funding for the Oxford/Stockholm Association in European Stiftelse and Torsten Law (Professor Ulf Bernitz) Söderbergs Stiftelse
ongoing support for the Erich Brost Departmental Lecturer in Stifterverband German Law and in EU Law
Stockholm Centre for funding for the Stockholm Centre Oxford Fellowship and the Commercial Law Stockholm Senior Visiting Fellowship
72 Governance of the Institute
The IECL’s meeting room: the Clifford Chance Seminar Room
he governance of the Institute is established in its Constitution approved by the Law Faculty Board. The Director reports both to the Dean of the Law Faculty and to the T Management Committee. The Management Committee has general oversight of the Institute including its administration of the degree in Law with Law Studies in Europe and the Diploma in Legal Studies. It receives reports on academic activity and programmes, monitors financial outcomes and approves strategies for income generation. The Advisory Council provides guidance to the Director on the strategic direction of the Institute. Its members are prominent persons in public life and the legal world who are well placed to advise upon and support the work of the Institute. The members of the Management Committee and the Advisory Council in 2018-19 were:
Management Committee
Professor Donal Nolan (Chair) Professor Nicholas Barber (from Trinity Term) Professor Ariel Ezrachi Professor Birke Häcker Dr Geneviève Helleringer Professor Ciara Kennefick (from Trinity Term) Professor Dorota Leczykiewicz Professor Ian Loader (Michaelmas and Hilary Terms) Dr Hartmut Mayer Professor Jeremias Prassl Professor Stephen Weatherill Professor Simon Whittaker
73 Advisory Council
The Right Honourable Lord Mance (Chair) Professor Guido Alpa (Sapienza University of Rome) Professor Sir Frank Berman QC (Essex Court Chambers) Mr Christopher Bright (Shearman & Sterling LLP) The Conseiller Culturel of the French Embassy in London Professor Paul Craig (Oxford Law Faculty) The Honourable Mr Justice Cranston Director, German Academic Exchange (DAAD) Director, Institute of European and Comparative Law Professor Sir David Edward (University of Edinburgh) Professor Mark Freedland (Oxford Law Faculty) Professor Sir Roy Goode (Oxford Law Faculty) Professor Sir Francis Jacobs (King's College London) Professor Angus Johnston (Oxford Law Faculty) Mr Alexander Layton QC (20 Essex Street) Ms Alexandra Marks (Judicial Appointments Committee) Mr Hugh Mercer QC (Essex Court) Mr Rupert Reece (Gide Loyrette Nouel LLP) The Right Honourable Lord Reed Sir Peter Roth (Competition Appeal Tribunal) The Honourable Mr Justice Silber Professor Henk Snijders (University of Leiden) The Vice Chancellor of Oxford University
74 Institute of European and Comparative Law Annual Report 2018-2019
For further information please contact:
The Administrator Institute of European and Comparative Law St Cross Building St Cross Road Oxford OX1 3UL [email protected]