“Iuris Vinculum” and New Contract Law in the Time of Global Value Chains

Traditional contract theory describes the relationship between contracting parties as a“iuris vinculum”. While such a reference to a “legal chain” can suggest a direct analogy between the Romanist tradition and today's economic globalization, its original connotation are individual contracts rather than the networks of multilayered contracts that create worldwide economic, political and legal relations among parties. These transnational complex networks refer to global value chains (GVCs) as the products of modern capitalism and the new face of international trade.

The economic modernization, transnationalized production and cooperation chains started to change the politics in trade to promote efficiency. Today GVCs gained a norm-generating effect to the extend of creating a new ‘world trade society’ by transforming moral duties into soft-law tools and operating intra different social orders. As such the governance of GVCs reflects the tension between territoriality of laws and transnationality of economic law, creating global inequalities between actors, countries, classes and genders.

This diverse and complex relationship between different actors and contemporary transformation of contractual relations requires that we revisit the classical contract law paradigm. This work aims to examine the possible mechanisms whereby to do this and in particular a re-evaluation of the Roman law remedies as a possible way to stabilize contractual relations by prioritizing behavioral standards based on constant dialogue between different legal norms.

A sandwich lunch will be available from 12.30. The meeting will begin at 1pm.