Professor Birke Häcker has accepted an invitation to join the International Advisory Board of the Journal  Legal Studies. Legal Studies is the journal of the  Society of Legal Scholars (SLS), the learned society of those who are engaged in legal education and scholarship in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is a generalist peer-reviewed journal recognised as one of the foremost academic law publications in the UK and the common law world, and it also enjoys an international readership far beyond the common law.

Following the successful Stockholm-Bonn Law Symposium 2024 held in April, the Institute is delighted to announce the launch of a new scholarship programme that will facilitate the academic exchange between the Department of Law at the University of Bonn and the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law (SCCL) at the University of Stockholm. The generously funded programme is aimed in particular at facilitating the mobility of early career researchers who want to spend between one and three months at the partner institution.

The inaugural round of applications has just opened and will run until 30 June 2024.

 More information about the scholarship programme as well as the application and selection process can be  found here.

On 11-12 April 2024, the Institute joined forces with the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law (SCCL)  to run a big event allowing colleagues from the Universities of Stockholm and Bonn to meet one another and to discuss topics of mutual current interest.

Twenty-three legal scholars from the University of Stockholm, all based at the SCCL, made the trip to Bonn to participate in the Stockholm Bonn Law Symposium 2024. On the Bonn side, the event was organised and hosted by Professor Birke Häcker, Director of the Institute of International and Comparative Private Law. On the Stockholm side, the lead lay with the Director of the SCCL, Professor Göran Millqvist, and the Chair of the SCCL Board, Dr. jur. h.c. André Andersson.

On 11 April 2024, Professor Häcker welcomed the visitors from Stockholm to the two-day event and initiated the proceedings with a presentation on the topic of “Law as a Science? Comparative Reflections of Classrooms, Codes and Cases”, which generated a lively debate amongst the participants. The following sessions were dedicated to more specific legal questions and were supplemented culturally with a short guided tour through the centre of Bonn and a viewing of early printed books in the Bonn University and State Library (ULB) .

On 12 April, the main academic exchange took place amongst an enlarged circle of participants in the impressive setting of Rheinhotel Dreesen in Bad Godesberg. For this part of the symposium, the Stockholm group was joined by twelve legal scholars from the University of Bonn whose academic interests coincide or overlap with the areas covered by members of the SCCL. Two topics were covered and discussed in a round-table meeting over the course of the afternoon. Each was introduced by an impulse from members of the SCCL and a short comment by a Faculty member of the Bonn Department of Law before the floor was opened to contributions around the table.

The first topic of the afternoon concerned the challenges posed by the EU’s envisaged “Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive” and already existing national counterparts (such as the German so-called “Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz”). The issues and problems raised by this legislation were explored in presentations by Dr. Jessica Östberg, Dr. Kelly Chen and Dr. Stina Bratt (all SCCL) and the ensuing comment by Professor Alexander Scheuch (Bonn). They ranged from the creation of a “level playing field” at EU level, via the peculiarities of the national regimes governing potential compensation claims and the relationship with administrative fines for relevant breaches, to the question of insurability of compliance risks.

The second topic of discussion concerned different national approaches to property law and the principles of foreclosure. Enticingly entitled “Possession and the Watch in the Centre Car Console”, the presentation by Professor Göran Millqvist and Associate Professor Johan Sandstedt (both SCCL) focused on a Swedish Supreme Court case concerning the seizure and attachment of a valuable Rolex watch found in the car of a debtor who claimed it belonged not to him, but to his partner. Following a comment by Professor Moritz Brinkmann (Bonn), the audience discovered that, in the field of foreclosure at least, the differences between Swedish property law with its avowedly “functional” approach and the more conceptual approach of German property law are not nearly as great as one might have expected or as is commonly assumed in comparative law literature.

Concluding the day with a get-together and a dinner overlooking the Rhine river, participants of the symposium had plenty of opportunity to meet and to discuss topics of mutual interest in an informal setting. The visit and joint symposium thus laid a fertile ground for the establishment of further academic links and friendships between Bonn and Stockholm.

Frau Professor Dr. Susanne Lilian Gössl führt im Mai 2023 in Kooperation mit Prof. Cristina González Beilfuss (Universitat de Barcelona), Prof. Tobias Helms (Universität Marburg), Dr. Hab. Ilaria Pretelli (Institut Suisse de Droit Comparé) und Prof. Patrick Wautelet (Université de Liège) eine Webinar-Reihe zum Thema "Analysing the EU Parenthood Proposal - Many Questions and Some Tentative Answers" durch. Nähere Informationen zu den Veranstaltungen und zur Anmeldung finden Sie hier.

Frau Prof. Dr. Susanne Lilian Gössl wurde in die Kommission zur reproduktiven Selbstbestimmung und Fortpflanzungsmedizin des Bundesgesundheitsministeriums berufen. Nähere Informationen finden Sie hier.

In late March 2023, Professor Birke Häcker (Schlegel Chair in Civil Law, Common Law and Comparative Law at the University of Bonn, there Director of the Institute of International and Comparative Private Law) and Dr Johannes Ungerer (Erich Brost Lecturer in German Law and EU Law at the Institute of European and Comparative Law – IECL – of the University of Oxford) convened an international workshop on the topic of ‘Default Rules in Private Law’. The event was organised under the auspices of the IECL and held at Brasenose College, Oxford. Default rules are legal rules that apply where and insofar as nothing else has been agreed or provided by the relevant parties; in contrast to mandatory rules, the parties may derogate from default rules by making their own arrangements. The aim of the workshop was to explore default rules in various areas of private law and from a comparative perspective. It is envisaged that the proceedings will be published in a collective volume in due course.

Professor Birke Häcker set the scene with a comparative introduction to default rules. She outlined the idea behind the collaborative project and highlighted some of the recurring themes and questions to be addressed at the workshop. These included the nature and functions of default rules, the very different forms default rules can take, and on what they are – or ought to be – modelled. Methods and mechanisms of generating default rules were then discussed by Professor Florian Möslein (University of Marburg). His focus was on ‘digitizing defaults’ in the context of online platforms, which increasingly seek to set the rules for parties operating on the platforms by displacing the otherwise applicable legal defaults. Professor Alexander Hellgardt (University of Regensburg) addressed the regulatory dimension of default rules in more detail. He looked at both the burden of ‘opting out’ of defaults and the content of defaults as means of regulation in private law. Turning to the supranational level, Professor Jürgen Basedow (Emeritus Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg) considered the role of default rules for European integration and the EU Internal Market. More specifically, he discussed the relevance and purposes of default rules that exist in EU private law and whether the scope of such rules could usefully be increased. Taking the perspective of behavioural economics, Dr Geneviève Helleringer (IECL Lecturer in French Law and Business Law) subsequently presented on the importance of defaults in light of the bounded rationality of humans. She explored various biases which may affect decision-making and can be counteracted by suitably designed defaults. Changing the perspective to how the judiciary sees and deals with default rules, Lord Sales (Justice of the UK Supreme Court) offered insights on default rules in the Common Law. He shed light on substantive rules as well as precedent and demonstrated just how ubiquitous the phenomenon is and how many shades of meaning and forms of operation the ‘default rules’ mechanism can take. The subsequent discussion particularly benefited from contributions by two former Law Commissioners, Professor Jack Beatson (formerly Lord Justice of Appeal; Emeritus Professor, University of Cambridge) and Professor Hugh Beale (Emeritus Professor, University of Warwick), who juxtaposed the legislative perspective on the use and creation of default rules.

Investigating default rules in specific areas of private law, Professor John Cartwright (Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford) discussed the nature and function of defaults in contract law. He shed light on the role of default rules for contracts in the Common Law tradition and for the various types of ‘special’ contracts in Civilian jurisdictions, using the example of France. Subsequently, Professor Simon Whittaker (University of Oxford) focused on consumer contracts, where default rules are in fact the exception since most of the rules are mandatory. Nonetheless, he explained that even within consumer contract law default rules played a number of different roles and explored this, inter alia, with respect to the scope and application of the law governing unfair contract terms. The great significance of default rules in the area of commercial and corporate finance law was addressed by Professor Louise Gullifer (University of Cambridge). She elucidated the sources, purposes, and design of default rules as they underpin, support and enhance the crucial role of private autonomy in the commercial context. Professor Gregor Christandl (University of Graz) dealt with defaults in succession law. Their relevance was highlighted mainly with regard to the rules on intestacy and the construction of wills. Professor Alan Bogg (University of Bristol) continued the discussion with his presentation on the nature and function of default rules in employment law. He discussed different trends regarding the role of defaults for employment contracts and more widely in connection with the transformation of the employment status we are witnessing at the moment. Turning to the law of civil procedure, Professor Giesela Rühl (Humboldt University Berlin) argued that one can often perceive supposedly mandatory rules in national civil procedure as defaults since party autonomy allows the parties to choose whether, where and how to litigate. On the other hand, she argued that in arbitration the flexibility provided by defaults appears increasingly limited. The closing presentation was delivered by co-convenor Dr Johannes Ungerer, who spoke on private international default rules. In the light of the complexity of cross-border cases, he addressed the relevance of defaults for both international uniform laws and the conflict of laws.

The convenors expressed – and would like to take this opportunity to reiterate – their gratitude to all participants for their papers and fruitful contributions to the discussion, to the IECL for generously supporting the event, and to Brasenose College for hosting it with characteristic warm hospitality. Two intense days of round-table discussions brought home to everybody how hugely important default rules are in academic debate and legal practice, yet how fiendishly complicated it can be to find their optimal design and mode of operation.