Dan Wielsch

The Function of Fundamental Rights in EU Private Law – Perspectives for the Common European Sales Law

The commonEuropean sales law (CESL) is designed to regulate a specific type of cross-border transaction in a comprehensive way.Within its scope it will be a supranational private law regime that operateswithout recourse to national legal systems. As the CESL heralds uniform law in other fields of European private law, the question arises how EU fundamental rights relate to such autonomous private law regimes. As the debate on the effect of fundamental rights on private actors seems arrested in the public/private dichotomy, it is submitted that constitutional rights adjudication can only be expected to respect the integrity of private law doctrine if private law itself recognizes its public constitutional function. This requires private law to enrich its methodological instruments and to explore the social conditions of personal autonomy, i.e. the socialmultilateralismof individual rights. In their most generic mode of operation, fundamental rights then must be viewed as imperatives of justification for all processes of generation of legal norms. Applying the existing possibilities for constitutionalizing private law will be decisive not only for the reality of genuinely European standards of justice in the CESL but also for theprospects for justice inother private law regimes. Résumé: Le Droit commun européen de la vente (DECV) vise à régler de manière détaillée certains types des transactions transfrontalières. Il constituera, à l’intérieur de son champ d’application, un droit privé supranational dont l’interprétation se fera sans recours aux droits nationaux. L’harmonisation progressive des systèmes de droit privé nationaux par un droit européen uniforme soulève la question de l’influence des droits fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne sur cet ordre juridique largement autonome qu’est le DECV. Ceci touche au débat bien établi sur l’effet des droits fondamentaux à l’égard de personnes privées qui est resté peu fructueux en raison de son alignement à la division entre public et privé. Au-delà de cette catégorisation, le suivant article présentera l’argument selon lequel les droits fondamentaux engagent le droit privé à réaliser sa propre dimenDan Wielsch: Professor Dr, LLM (Berkeley), University of Cologne, Chair for Private Law and Legal Theory, E ˗ Mail: dan.wielsch@uni-koeln.de ERCL 2014; 10(3): 365–389

The Differentiation of Property

The meaning of the term ‘property’ for the purpose of law has undergone substantial shifts over time. Arguably, these semantic shifts have been provoked by changes in the institutions constitutive for social order. At least this is what can be concluded from a history of concepts that allies with an account of the evolution of social structures. The fact that people use the same words over time does not mean that they are necessarily also referring to the same state of affairs. As such, extensive shifts in meaning are to be expected as a consequence of changes in the very form of social differentiation. This seems to bear particular relevance when a stratified society that regulates the possible ways of interaction through social ranks transits into a functionally differentiated society in which the chances of the individual depend on its inclusion into various subsystems each of them exclusively processing a specific task for society. Historically, property had to mirror the medieval pyramid of possession rights related to real estate as much as it had to underpin an economic system solely integrated through money transactions and the free seizing of opportunities to get return on investment. However, the converse also applies: people’s ideas about the nature and purpose of particular concepts may influence the development of social structures. They can occupy the central imaginative space of a field so that

Die Kontrolle von Energiepreisen zwischen BGB und GWB

Der Beitrag nimmt die jungste Rechtsprechung zur Billigkeitskontrolle von Energiepreisen zum Anlass, nach dem Verhaltnis von allgemein-privatrechtlicher Rechtsfortbildung und kartellrechtlichen Instrumenten beim Schutz von Letztverbrauchern zu fragen. Insbesondere wird erortert, unter welchen Voraussetzungen eine Verdrangung des Privatrechts durch das Wirtschaftsrecht stattfindet.

Rückabwicklung widerruflicher Realkredite im Finanzierungsverbund

Anders als die Ausführungen des Europäischen Gerichtshofs zu den Anforderungen der Haustürgeschäfterichtlinie an die Zurechenbarkeit der Haustürsituation im Urteil „Crailsheimer Volksbank/ Conrads“ wird das Urteil „Schulte/Badenia“ in Stellungnahmen (siehe insbesondere Ehricke, ZBB 2005, 443) kontrovers diskutiert. Tatsächlich reicht dieses Urteil weiter und verdient erhöhte Aufmerksamkeit, betrifft es doch die Folgen eines Widerrufs im nationalen Recht. Der Verfasser arbeitet das dem Urteil zugrunde liegende Verständnis von Widerrufsbelehrung und Widerrufsrecht heraus und zeigt, wie das deutsche Recht richtlinienkonform interpretiert werden kann.