It is a special pleasure to welcome the 22nd book in the series The Common Core of European Private Law. This book is edited by two Dutch scholars. Their works are already renowned and appreciated well beyond the ‘Common Core’ circles.

The Common Core project was launched in 1993 at the University of Trento under the auspices of the late Professor Rudolf B. Schlesinger. The methodology used in the Common Core project, then novel, is now a classic. By making use of case studies, it goes beyond mere description to detailed inquiry into how most European Union legal systems resolve specific legal questions in practice, and to thorough comparisons between those systems. It is our hope that these volumes will provide scholars with a valuable tool for research in comparative law and in their own national legal systems. The collection of materials that the Common Core project is off ering to the scholarly community is already quite extensive and will become even more so as more volumes are published. The availability of materials attempting a genuine analysis of how things seem to be is, in our opinion, a prerequisite for an intelligent and critical discussion on how they should be. Perhaps in the future European private law will be authoritatively restated or even codified. As of today, the Common Core project is the longestrunning scholarly enterprise in the field. The analytical work carried out by the more than 300 scholars that have so far joined us in the Common Core project is also a precious asset of knowledge and legitimisation for any such a normative enterprise.

We must thank the editors and contributors for their work. With a sense of deep gratitude, we also wish to recall our late Honorary Editors, Professors Rudolf B. Schlesinger and Rodolfo Sacco.

No scholarly project can survive without committed sponsors. The International University College of Turin allows us to organise the General Meetings together with the Centro Studi di Diritto Comparato of Trieste. The European Commission has partially sponsored some of our past General Meetings, having included them in their High Level Conferences Program.

The Chinese Civil Code, approved on 28 May 2021, is an important code for several reasons: it is a synthesis of the Roman legal system, a privileged place collecting institutions and dogmatic systems through categories, institutes and principles that provides a careful and balanced synthesis of the matter it regulates. Besides the well-known and peculiar concepts of the civil law system encompassed by the Chinese Civil Code, socialism with Chinese characteristics and custom as source of law in the absence of statutory provisions set the Code between past and future with its own identity and the ability to adapt to the continuous and future changes of the surrounding reality. The only certainty in this continuous evolution of the surrounding reality, is that the Code belongs and is open to the system in a process of continuous and mutual enhancement and complementarity. The typical and distinctive patterns of Roman tradition are endorsed and combined with Chinese legal tradition for their interpretative value, both individually and in the context of the Code as a whole, to give certainty and solidity to a regulatory system meant to last over time.

This Chapter appraises the range and depth of Patrick Glenn’s scholarly legacy by exploring some of the many lessons that can be drawn from his opus magnum Legal Traditions of the World. To this purpose, the chapter will focus on three key notions underlying Glenn’s chefs-d’œuvre: Law, Tradition, and Conciliation. The argument is that Glenn’s findings have in multiple ways enlightened the understanding of what the law is (outside and also inside the West), as well as the relentless dynamics within and between legal traditions. Through these findings, Glenn has also provided us – his friends, colleagues, readers – with a powerful intellectual tool to pursue his conciliatory dream towards a world of tolerance and diversity.

It is a special pleasure to welcome the 19th book in the series The Common Core of European Private Law, the second published by Intersentia. This book is edited by three scholars, who together represent four different legal cultures: the Dutch, the English, the German, and the Italian. Their works are already renowned and appreciated well beyond the ‘Common Core’ circles.

The Common Core project was launched in 1993 at the University of Trento under the auspices of the late Professor Rudolf B. Schlesinger. The methodology used in the Common Core project, then novel, is now a classic. By making use of case studies, it goes beyond mere description to detailed inquiry into how most European Union legal systems resolve specific legal questions in practice, and thorough to comparisons between those systems. It is our hope that these volumes will provide scholars with a valuable tool for research in comparative law and in their own national legal systems. The collection of materials that the Common Core project is offering to the scholarly community is already quite extensive and will become even more so as more volumes are published. The availability of materials attempting a genuine analysis of how things seem to be is, in our opinion, a prerequisite for an intelligent and critical discussion on how they should be. Perhaps in the future European private law will be authoritatively restated or even codified. As of today, the Common Core project is the longest-running scholarly enterprise in the field. The analytical work carried out by the more than 300 scholars that have so far joined us in the Common Core project is also a precious asset of knowledge and legitimisation for any such a normative enterprise.

We must thank the editors and contributors for their work. With a sense of deep gratitude, we also wish to recall our late Honorary Editor, Professor Rudolf B. Schlesinger. We are sad that we have not been able to present him with the results of a project in which he believed so firmly.

No scholarly project can survive without committed sponsors. The International University College of Turin allows us to organise the General Meetings together with the Centro Studi di Diritto Comparato of Trieste. The European Commission has partially sponsored some of our past General Meetings, having included them in their High Level Conferences Program.

It is a special pleasure to welcome the 18th book in the series The Common Core of European Private Law, the first published by Intersentia. This book is edited by three scholars, who together represent two different legal cultures: the Dutch and the Scottish. Their works are already renowned and appreciated well beyond the ‘Common Core’ circles.

The Common Core project was launched in 1993 at the University of Trento under the auspices of the late Professor Rudolf B. Schlesinger. The methodology used in the Common Core project, then novel, is now a classic. By making use of case studies, it goes beyond mere description to detailed inquiry into how most European Union legal systems resolve specific legal questions in practice, and to thorough comparisons between those systems. It is our hope that these volumes will provide scholars with a valuable tool for research in comparative law and in their own national legal systems. The collection of materials that the Common Core project is offering to the scholarly community is already quite extensive and will become even more so as more volumes are published. The availability of materials attempting a genuine analysis of how things seem to be is, in our opinion, a prerequisite for an intelligent and critical discussion on how they should be. Perhaps in the future European private law will be authoritatively restated or even codified. As of today, the Common Core project is the longest-running scholarly enterprise in the field. The analytical work carried out by the more than 300 scholars that have so far joined us in the Common Core project is also a precious asset of knowledge and legitimisation for any such a normative enterprise.

We must thank the editors and contributors for their work. With a sense of deep gratitude, we also wish to recall our late Honorary Editor, Professor Rudolf B. Schlesinger. We are sad that we have not been able to present him with the results of a project in which he believed so firmly.

No scholarly project can survive without committed sponsors. The International University College of Turin allows us to organise the General Meetings together with the Centro Studi di Diritto Comparato of Trieste.

Introduction

The availability of democracy is usually presented as a prerequisite for any evaluation, be it political, economic, or legal, of any country, and as an imperative to pursue (with or without Western help) for all societies that do not enjoy it.

Here it cannot be discussed how political scientists define democracy and the bases for those definitions, nor can it be debated whether the ‘just’ is inherent in notions of democracy. What is evident in the global arena, however, is that besides those who consider the non-democratic societies to be pathological, there are those who view our democracies as local expressions of a particular culture and those who, for given places and ages, discuss the merits of different forms of government, including those of an autocratic or epistocratic nature. Nowadays the latter views recur in particular in and about east Asian and Islamic societies. It is difficult to challenge any of these perspectives without being dogmatic and in a way that respects the cultural differences of the ‘others’. Yet one can start by noting two points. First, entrusting power to a wise or an autocratic elite presupposes agreement about the ‘wisdom’ and the qualities of these elites, which, in turn, requires a social body generally sharing homogeneous values. These are requirements that one cannot take for granted for the long term, particularly today, in the majority of known societies. Second, in non-democratic forms of government, there are no guarantees of the rulers’ culture and preferences remaining in step with the changing needs of the society. The lack of adaptation to societal needs, on the one hand, does not deter authoritarian shifts aimed at imposing the ruler’s views on the social body, and, on the other hand, makes it certain that its inner flexibility and receptiveness to change make democracy preferable ‘over time’. This ought to be considered as crucial, and also biologically inevitable, if each generation, and each of us, accepts that it answers to the next and subsequent generations like a tenant to the landlord.

Comparative law means different things to different people, and each of these meanings can, in and of itself, be scientifically acceptable. Comparative law may be seen as the macro-comparison of the world’s legal systems; as the study of legal transplants – that is, of the borrowing of ideas between legal cultures and/or systems; as the most fruitful way of exploring the relationship between law and society, and the underlying perceptions of law; as well as the magnifying glass through which one best observes how state law lives side by side with other (supranational and domestic) sources of law and, thereby, how relative the notion of state power (as spread by mainstream political analysis) can be. This Companion goes through these and other possible meanings of comparative law, trying to show how the diverse working methods entailed by each of them can all be useful tools for the understanding of legal phenomena, as long as they stay close to what the law is and to how the law lives in the different settings – regardless of what one might like (and regardless of what any kind of personal and cultural bias may expect) the law to be.

This very approach also helps one realize how our discipline should, and this Companion does, take up the challenge launched by the fast evolving fields of international law and ‘global’ law. The latter areas are crowded – with some prominent exceptions – with experts whose cultural toolkits make the analysis focus largely on positive, or would-be positive (as is the case for most soft-law initiatives), legal rules. Comparative law, by contrast, looks at the law taking into consideration all the possible interactions between the primary sources, be they official or unofficial, dictating the rules and the activities necessary to apply the rules. Therefore, for any comparatist, there is no serious chance of leaving aside any unofficial factor, including those of a geopolitical nature, able to affect the convictions and the legal culture of the rule-setters, the decision-makers, and the law-users.

This is the twelfth book in the series The Common Core of European Private Law published within the Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law. The project was launched in 1993 under the auspices of the late Professor Rudolf B. Schlesinger.

The methodology used in the project is still unparalleled. By making use of case studies it goes beyond mere description to detailed inquiry into how most European Union legal systems resolve specific legal questions in practice, and to thorough comparison between those systems. It is our hope that these volumes will provide scholars with a valuable tool for research in comparative law and in their own national legal systems. The collection of materials that the Common Core Project is offering to the scholarly community is already quite extensive and will become even more so when more volumes are published. The availability of materials attempting a genuine analysis of how things are is, in our opinion, a prerequisite for a fully-fledged and critical discussion on how they should be. Perhaps in the future European private law will be authoritatively restated or even codified. The analytical work carried on today by the almost 200 scholars involved in the Common Core Project is a precious asset of knowledge and legitimisation for any such normative enterprise.

We must thank the editors and contributors to the already published volumes, and those who are working hard to achieve future results.