General Editors' Preface

The European Brotherhood of Lawyers: The Reinvention of Legal Science in the Making of European Private Law

“…And yet, it would be harder still to find an academic legal discipline that is flourishing as much as “European private law” (Schmid 1999; Hesselink 2002). Specialized academic journals are thriving, 5 voluminous learned tomes on “European” tort and contract law have appeared (Von Bar 1998, 2000; Kötz 2000), publishers are producing dedicated series of books, 6 courses and modules are offered throughout the continent, collections of conference papers come out in a steady stream (Hartkamp 1994; Müller-Graff 1999; Van Hoecke and Ost 2000; Grundmann and Struyck 2002; Vogenauer and Weatherill 2006), chairs and graduate schools are dedicated to the subject, and a variety of lavishly funded transnational research projects is producing libraries full of work (Wurmnest 2003): the Ius Commune school is uncovering common principles through a series of casebooks (Van Gerven 1998; Van Gerven, Lever, and Larouche 2000; Beale 2002; Beatson and Schrage 2003), and the Trento Group is slowly unearthing the Common Core of European Private Law (Bussani and Mattei 2003; Zimmermann and Whittaker 2000; Gordley 2001; Bussani and Valentine Palmer 2003; Kieniger 2004; Sefton-Green 2005). 7 The Lando Commission has produced its “Principles of European Contract Law” (Lando and Beale 2000; Lando 2003), the Tilburg Group has produced similar principles of European Tort Law (European Group on Tort Law 2005; Wagner 2005), the Academy of European Private Lawyers in Pavia has come out with a draft European Code of Contracts (Gandolfi 2001), and the Study Group on a European Civil Code is working away on its draft articles and comparative studies (Von Bar and Drobnig 2004).…”