Sep 27th 2015, 16:27

SOME SUBSTANTIVE EUROPEAN LAW AREAS REVIEWED AND WELL RESEARCHED

An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers

The international character of shipping and transport has always been a great incubator for harmonization of law so this book is a breath of fresh air for all European law watchers.

Recently, there has been increasing interest within the European Union in harmonization of general private law, with different harmonisation instruments such as common core, PECL (ie contracts) and DCFR (ie frameworks) coming into existence.

Even though both shipping and transport law and the harmonisation instruments aim at further harmonisation of private law, the potential interplay between them has never been examined thoroughly in doctrine. So, in this book the possible impact of these private law harmonisation instruments on shipping and transport law is brilliantly assessed.

First of all the book investigates whether such harmonisation instruments can contribute to uniformity of shipping and transport law in fields where such uniformity is currently lacking.

Second, it looks at whether the current harmonisation instruments or a future European private law could change national or international shipping and transport law. This cross-fertilisation between shipping law and harmonisation instruments makes this book not only a valuable instrument for shipping lawyers, but also for anyone interested in harmonisation of private law in the following decades.

This work is another successful title in a series of books from Intersentia which is “devoted to the common foundations of the European legal system”. The publishers have brought together this “Ius Commune Europaeum” series to include comparative legal studies as well as studies on the effect of treaties within member states’ legal systems.

Readers will be delighted to know that the books are published in various European languages under the auspices of METRO, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research at Maastricht University.

They have been very well translated and we found them both easy to read and a great contribution to the continuing debate on where we are going at this particular crossroads as the 21st century unfolds and develops. Thank you.