Alessandro Somma

Towards a European Private Law? The Common Frame of Reference in the Conflict between EC Law and National Laws

European private law, as it has been defined in the so-called Common Frame of Reference, reflects the will to build up a private law society based on ordoliberalism and social market economy, that is on the use of competition as political direction tool. This implicates a conflict with European national constitutionalism, considering individuals as carriers of structural social weakness which cannot be balanced through the reinstatement of the mythical capacity for self-determination. Yet, the market is in essence a tool of redistribution of wealth, which is to be regulated in order to give the possibility of accessing resources guaranteed by social rights, and not in order to ensure the survival of the economic order.

Social Justice and the Market in European Contract Law

Abstract European contract law must be developed along lines which are different from those proposed by free market enthusiasts. To this end, it must be based upon the principles enshrined in national constitutions and developed by national courts, in accordance with various technical expedients, but which are all the natural consequence of one political design: to have courts acting as a counterweight in situations where contracting parties are structurally weak. The contract law model contained in the European Constitution is quite different from this. It is based upon the ordoliberal principle of social market economy, which permits contractual freedom only in so far as it contributes to the stability of markets. To devise contract law in line with the doctrines enunciated by national courts does not entail opposition to the market: it merely requires markets to function according to different principles than those currently valued at EC-level, such as those which involve promoting social dialogue as a means for re-examining the current economic model.

Reshaping Markets. Economic Governance, the Global Financial Crisis and Liberal Utopia.

Set against the origins and consequences of the global financial crisis, this timely book offers an enriching and revealing narrative of the role that the state plays in regulating markets. Focusing on core areas of private law such as corporate, labour and banking law, the contributors offer a conceptual framework in which to examine the central tenets of the role of private law in today’s global economy. In the current climate of ever-increasing economic inequality and austerity measures, the authors highlight the urgent need for a comprehensive analysis of the continuing tension between ideas of market liberalism and theories of society. With a focus on both the domestic and transnational dimensions of market governance, the authors offer a crucial insight into the co-existence and interaction between state and market-based economic governance.

Introducción Al Derecho Comparado (Introduction to Comparative Law)

Spanish Abstract: La mirada que el comparatista dirige al derecho parte de un punto de observacion externo. Es la mirada de quien contempla el derecho en su estructura, pero tambien en su funcion; en su consideracion como conjunto de preceptos, pero tambien de instituciones que los ponen en accion para distribuir imperativamente bienes y valores. Es la mirada de quien, mas que el derecho, examina la experiencia juridica, tanto en su dimension empirica como en su esencia de practica discursiva.Asi es desde el nacimiento de la comparacion como ciencia autonoma a inicios del siglo XX, cuando comparecio en el escenario del saber juridico para refundarlo sobre bases criticas: para dislocar las convenciones y pensamientos unicos, como el legicentrismo y el dogmatismo tipico de los paradigmas cientificos imperantes en la epoca. De ahi la identidad del comparatista como estudioso llamado a analizar el fenomeno del derecho inmerso en su dimension espacio-temporal, valorando por tanto las interacciones entre el derecho y las otras ciencias sociales.English Abstract: This book tries to answer three main questions for comparative lawyers: (1) What to compare, pleading for a broad notion of “law” and “institutions”; (2) Why to compare, analysing recent debt restructuring mechanisms in the Eurozone as a means for obtaining forced legal change; (3) How to compare, connecting comparative law methods with the purpose of enhancing uniformity or diversity.

At the Roots of European Private Law: Social Justice, Solidarity and Conflict in the Proprietary Order

The paper identifies three different approaches to social justice in contract law, corresponding to a classical liberal model, an ordoliberal model and the model consistent with European post-war constitutionalism. (i) In the classical liberal model law enforces the outcome of the social conflict and attributes juridical strength to social strength: contract law protects the spontaneous result of social conflict and the execution of the contract as it has been freely stipulated. This model is based on conflict, whose result is embedded by law. (ii) Ordoliberals intended to complete the bourgeois revolution, which assured individual freedom, but missed to develop an order in which individual freedom could be developed. This is exactly what the state had to do with interventions necessary to prevent market failures, i.e. necessary to conform and functionalize economic freedoms for the survive of an economic system based on competition. In line with this, contract law has to hide and shape social conflict, adapting the behaviour of contractual parties to achieve the aims pursued by the legal system. Cooperation between the parties to the contract has to be encouraged, i.e. solidarity vis-a-vis the system. There is no direct intervention aimed at balancing social weakness and, if this occurs, it is only an indirect effect. Ordoliberalism is now the paradigma of EC-contact law, as it is made clear by the many references to social market economy. EC-contract law based on cooperation is a contract law without solidarity: social justice may be an effect of contract regulation, but it is only a indirect effect. (iii) European national constitutionalism reacted at the end of 2nd world war to the ordoliberal paradigm. Solidarity became a way of distributing wealth: vertical solidarity between the State and its citizens and horizontal solidarity among citizens. Vertical solidarity is the one assured by the welfare state: it shapes indirectly the market, but it does not affect the market. Horizontal solidarity affects the market in a way that is different from the idea of enhancing cooperation between market operators towards a result that is beyond their interests. Conflict is therefore recognised, but is shaped ensuring equality arms for the parties: law fights social weakness with legal strength and social strength with legal weakness. This is the core of a social justice model which is based on both conflict and solidarity.

Nicht einen Nagel habt ihr entfernt

Inhalt: 1. Italien und die Sanktionen gegen den Faschismus: Geschichte einer unbequemen Angelegenheit. 2. Die Rolle der alliierten Militärregierung und der Comitati di liberazione nazionale unter besonderer Bezugnahme auf die Säuberung in privaten Unternehmen. 3. Die Bestrafung faschistischer Verbrechen: Fragen rechtspolitischer und rechtstechnischer Art. 4. Die Säuberung in der öffentlichen Verwaltung: Faschisten als Diener der Partei und Faschisten als Diener des Staates. 5. Die Säuberung in der Berufswelt und die Beschlagnahme der Profite des Regimes. 6. Der Zwang zur nationalen Befriedung und das Scheitern der Sanktionen gegen den Faschismus. 7. Kontinuität und Verdrängung als Fundamente der wieder auferstandenen Demokratie.