Simon Whittaker

Principles of French law

Introduction: The Spirit of French Law PART I: THE SYSTEM 1. Sources of Law 2. Court Institutions 3. People Administering Justice PART II: THE LAW 4. Legal Procedure 5. Constitutional Law 6. Administrative Law 7. Criminal Law 8. Family Law 9. The Law of Property 10. The Law of Obligations 11. Commercial Law 12. Employment Law PART III: STUDYING FRENCH LAW 13. Bibliographical Guide and Legal Methods Appendix: Bibliographical Sources and Legal Methods

Unfair Contract Terms, Unfair Prices and Bank Charges

This note considers how the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Directive 1993 draws the line between the review of unfair contract terms and the review of unfair contracts (and, in particular, unfair prices) in the context of two cases concerning bank charges: Abbey Life plc v The Office of Fair Trading (2009) (the Bank Charges case) in the UK Supreme Court and Case 484/08 Caja de Madrid (2010) in the European Court of Justice. The note explains the proper question to be addressed by a court for this purpose under article 4(2) of the Directive and criticises the Supreme Courts approach to the interpretation of article 4(2) and its application of the UK regulation implementing this article to the circumstances in the Bank Charges case.

EL PRECEDENTE EN EL DERECHO INGLÉS: UNA VISIÓN DESDE LA CIUDADELA

RESUMEN: En este articulo el autor procura explicar, a juristas con una formaciondistinta que la del Common Law, el enfoque de los tribunales ingleses hacia el efectorevestido de autoridad de las decisiones previas (“precedentes” en un primer sentido),postura que el Derecho ingles ha fijado famosamente (o en forma tristemente celebre) enel marco de la “doctrina del precedente”, en cuya virtud los fallos anteriores pueden obligar a tribunales posteriores (“precedente” en un segundo sentido). Para este objeto, elautor en primer lugar ubica esta doctrina en el contexto de ciertas caracteristicas particu-lares del sistema juridico en general (la posicion constitucional de los jueces, la relacionentre ley y Common Law, la unidad de las instituciones judiciales inglesas y las respecti-vas funciones de jueces y partes). A continuacion, el autor describe la doctrina formal delprecedente pero buscando exponer el uso de los precedentes antiguos por parte de losjueces ingleses modernos, lo que ilustra con la reciente sentencia de la Camara de los

Burden of Proof in the Consumer Acquis and in the Draft Common Frame of Reference: Law, Fact and Things in Between

Abstract Burden of proof concerns fact, but not law. From a sense of the inadequacy of this over-simple starting-point, the author of this article considers whether there is any consistent view in either the consumer acquis or the DCFR as to the appropriate object of burden of proof: should it go beyond raw fact and extend to the characterisation of facts in legal terms? In order to do so, he first considers two broad elements which contribute to the ways in which European lawyers understand the line between fact and law (whether in the national or in the EC law context): the relative generality of legal propositions and the procedural and institutional significances of the distinction itself. Having then briefly explained what he means by ‘raw fact’ and ‘pure law’, he seeks to identify three broad categories of things in between: the application of relatively simple legal concepts to raw facts; the application of evaluative legal concepts to raw facts; and legal characterization beyond raw facts. In each of these (and with illustrations from national law, the acquis and the DCFR) he seeks to show that the laws considered can and sometimes do extend the application of burden of proof from its core home of pure fact (where its remit is to allocate the risk of uncertainty as to past actions, intentions or events) so as to allocate the risk of uncertainty in judicial decision-making in the application of the law and not merely in the finding of facts. The conclusion reached, though, is that while examples of all these ‘things in between’ can be found in both the acquis and the DCFR, there is no overall consistent approach as to the question whether burden of proof should be restricted to pure fact or extended to the characterisation of facts. This inconsistency should not, however, be considered as itself a sign of incoherence: the appropriateness of the allocation of risk in the application of the law should be determined by reference to the particular context of the legislation in question and as a function of the tension between its purposes, the principle of effectiveness and the principle of the national autonomy of civil procedure.