IECL Seminar Series

Prof. John Cartwright

Codification in the Common Law

Codification is generally thought of as a feature of modern legal systems in the civil law world. However, codification is also used by common law systems, although there is a real question whether the form of ‘codification’ employed by common law legislators is comparable to the codification employed by civil law legislators. The focus of the discussion here will be on the role of codification in English private law, in particular contract law, where codification has been explored in the modern era, but abandoned. There may, however, still be a role for the intervention of codifying legislation to solve some of the problems faced within the general rules of English contract law.

Edoardo Piermattei 

The Shift and The Shocks: Do International Commercial Courts Convey a New Lex Mercatoria in Europe?

The international business community's ‘slow stifling’ to overcome legal fragmentation beyond the boundaries of nation-states has been in the spotlight of academic writings for about half a century. Despite this trend, since the divergence of legal norms and trade customs proved an impediment to profit in the post-globalization era, lex mercatoria is being reborn in a new guise drawing on dispute resolution mechanisms’ expertise and capacity-building support. 

In this light, the research considers the underlying dynamics and the main tenets of the International Commercial Courts, pursuing the question of whether it is accurate to describe them as a better place to affect the meaningful unification of a truly commercial law in Europe and beyond. Then, the discussion sheds a critical view on how these institutions work collectively as ‘mosaic tiles’ to promote a new wave of explanatory commercial law’s harmonization, anchored around a global rule of law and a network of institutions capable of sustaining a convergence process.