Source: https://www.utrechtjournal.org/articles/10.5334/ujiel.dg/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 10:52:51+00:00

Document:
A graduate of the Universities of Glasgow (LLB, Honours of the First Class, 2009), Edinburgh (LLM, Distinction, 2010) and the EUI (Ph.D., 2014), I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in Law at the Faculty of Law of McGill University, with funding from The Leverhulme Trust.
This paper begins by briefly outlining private law’s evolution alongside the emergence of the Nation States; it then aims to set out the mutual influence of these concepts on national culture, tradition and identity in order to highlight the significance of the political, economic and legal as well as social and cultural contexts in which the processes of integration and Europeanisation occur. Against this background, the scope for European private law to emerge as a plural, multi-level construct and a dynamic endeavour is recognised. Building on this analysis of the significance of the diversity and commonality of cultures, traditions and identities in national private law development, institutionalised at the Union level in the principle of unitas in diversitate, the paper explores the need for a single, common European notion of culture, tradition or identity. This examination is undertaken with reference to an example, namely the evolution of the concept of consumer, from its national foundations to its engagement in Union legislation and CJEU jurisprudence. Drawing conclusions as to the need for such a common, European concept, the paper advances a plea for the recognition of a shift in the perspective of legal development, to one which acknowledges the dynamic evolution of private law within a pluralist, multi-level regulatory construct.
The paper firstly outlines the emergence of the Nation State and highlights its existence at the core of private law development. Thereafter, it explores the intertwining roles of the State in law-making processes and law in state-making, making reference to codification as the long-dominant mechanism of private law development. This outline underpins the analysis of the mutual influence of the concepts of State, culture and tradition to contemporary private law development and, in particular, the Europeanisation of private law.
In respect of private law in particular, it is pertinent to begin with the ius commune. This body of law – emerging from the evolution of legal thought of the late 11th and early 12th centuries, following the rediscovery of the Corpus Juris Civilis – continues to influence our thinking about its contemporary development. Bologna, boasting the first university,1 reigned as the centre of ‘transnational’ legal education;2 lawyers from diverse geographic areas came to study there and contributed to knowledge sharing (particularly of legal reasoning skills, in the styles of the Glossators and Commentators), and facilitated its dissemination as they returned to their native legal orders.3 The authority attached to this education and the body of law that emerged (of common legal language and style of thought), together with its influence across much of Europe, provided the foundations for the ius commune’s development.4 This reading of the historical significance of the ius commune continues to generate support for the a new common body of law particularly at the European level5 and moreover, underpins assertions that ‘law beyond the state’ is really nothing new but reflects existing phenomena including, e.g. the lex mercatoria.
Delving deeper into private law development, the emergence of the unified Nation State and the entrenchment of national law brought to the fore the significance of coherence and systemisation in law, one amongst many of the objectives of codification (and also, of the common law). Just as the foundations of codification diverged across the States, so too did the bases of coherence. Indeed, the significance of unity and coherence in the German legal system derived from the dominance of Pandectism, which embraced ‘the ethics of autonomy with which Kant endowed the renaissant legal science around 1800’;15 this derived not only from codification processes itself but from the 19th century evolution of German legal scholarship, of which the BGB formed part.
This circularity begs a number of questions, to which the paper returns in the discussion of European culture and identity below. For Hardt and Negri, identity is constructed from the grouping together of people on the basis of race or class; divergences between groups existing within a particular space, i.e. the territory of the Nation State, are eliminated and the identity created is deemed to be ‘representative’ of the whole as ‘a hegemonic group, race or class’.29 This identity, attributed to a particular Nation State, distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’, allowing for boundaries to be drawn and, on its reproduction across national spaces, for distinct national identities. This understanding of identity, as it is conceived with regard to otherness (that is, as the opposite of same), is necessarily defined in terms of what constitutes the self, which within the context of the State, reflects the collective unit as opposed to the individual.
The emergence of an identity deriving from national culture can be tied to the evolution of the concept of the consumer, a key concept of both national and European private law. Indeed, it is the identification of a party as a consumer that gives rise to the application of consumer protection norms. Thus, the concept, which emerged initially within the context of the Nation State34 and as such, encompasses determinations of national and local preference, is an operative one. The consumer identity came to reflect a conceptualisation embedded within and shaped by general and consumer culture and distinct to each national system. As such, the scope for its transfer beyond the Nation State, i.e. to the European level for the purposes of private law development, necessarily brings to the fore the legal and cultural as well as the economic, political and social diversities across the Member States. The analysis of the foundations and evolution of the identity of the consumer in the cultures and traditions of the Nation State allows for the foregoing discussion to be concretised.
Thus, due to its emergence in context, the formal conceptualisation of consumer might differ across national legal systems; moreover, empirical research indicates that ‘national cultural variation’42 impacts consumer culture generally, and consumer behaviour, including responses to information43 and communications, ability to trust and exercise of rationality in decision-making processes.44 In this light, the notion that ‘ … the consumer role model of a particular legal system can be seen as a mirror of this society’s vision of its market and social system’45 comes to the fore. As this identity is engaged and refined at both the national and European levels, its foundations and the factors shaping it in both contexts, are relevant.
This understanding complements the outline above, pertaining to private law’s foundations in the Nation State, and its emergence alongside the construction of national culture, tradition and identity. It suggests that legal development is not merely legal but also social, economic, political and cultural and that as this is true at the national level, it is also true beyond the State.46 Moreover, as European integration and the Europeanisation of private law is advanced within a multi-level, pluralist construct, it must be understood that legal institutions operate within a context defined within and beyond the territorial boundaries of the State. Both reflections suggest a need to engage the ‘deeply political, sociological and cultural dimensions of law’47 embedded within the Member States and Union regime as Europeanisation continues, increasingly in areas previously falling predominantly within the jurisdiction of the national legal order.
This section elaborates on the normative and conceptual space within which national and European private laws evolve. In particular, it sets out the foundations of the pluralist perspective and unpins the understanding of European private law as a multi-level construct. While the existence of pluralism is an empirical determination, it has normative effects, shaping the structure of the relevant regime and its interaction with others. Particularly, related to the multi-level characterisation, it advances that authority is not centralised in a single source but is found in diverse spaces. The concept of multi-level governance derives from the recognition – initially within the social sciences48 – that policy planning and governance often occurs at different levels within the same given space. Consequently, states usually cannot establish or promote their own policy simply per their sovereign state authority but must rather engage in cooperative efforts. This requires the coordination of the actors engaged, including legislatures, courts, agencies, regulators, civil society bodies, scholars and increasingly, private individuals. Building on this outline, this section introduces the shifting conceptualisations of private law, a result of its Europeanisation.
The desire to avoid conflict potentially deriving from the interdependence of legal orders is reflected in the principle of primacy of Union law, and its precedence over national law. Moreover, conform interpretation, developed in relation to the conformity of specific legal rules between national and Union law in Marleasing75 and extended in later case law to cover the entire system, initially aimed to promote consistency in relation to the (then) first pillar of EU law and was subsequently extended to the third pillar.76 It requires that the national judge consider the entire legal system so as to ensure her interpretation is compatible with Union law: the obligation of ‘conform’ interpretation is no longer seen as an application of the principle of primacy, but has been gradually transformed into a holistic principle of ‘consistent’ (or ‘harmonious’) interpretation of the whole legal order at all levels;77 and secondly, that the emphasis is no longer – or no longer merely – on the ‘hierarchy’ of legal norms, or legal orders but rather on consistency between levels of regulation’.78 This understanding of the doctrine engages the acceptance of pluralism – and constitutional pluralism79 in particular – as well as the multi-level nature of private law.
The EU legislature, engaging private law as predominantly technical, initially assumed that the construction of a ius commune, in ‘European civil code’ form, would facilitate the emergence of a uniform (and as it seems now, mistakenly, unified) European private law.87 This deduction has become highly dubious, not least because it affords little opportunity for understanding private law in its entirety (that is, its political, social, and cultural, as well as legal and economic dimensions).88 Indeed, for this, amongst other reasons, the Union institutions have shifted their focus from codification in recent decades, particularly towards targeted maximum harmonisation.89 The recognition that neither codification nor harmonisation necessarily leads to unity, aligns with private law’s constitutionalisation, regulation and materialisation.
The characterisation of European private law as a multi-level structure is significant. Its problems also tend to be conceptualised functionally, and consequently, they cut across the national, European, international and transnational orders. Yet the EU continues to lack an enforcement body and thus, must rely on the ‘local’ or national counterparts for application and enforcement.100 As a result, the national courts have gradually been empowered by the CJEU to balance different freedoms and rights,101 bringing a necessarily political dimension to private law within the national spheres.
IV. Via Unitas in Diversitate to a Europeanised (Legal) Culture?
This section of the paper further analyses the embeddedness explored above, developing the discourse on the reciprocal influences of culture, state-building and legal development, and uncovering the perspective of unitas in diversitate in relation to private law’s plural, multi-level development. This leads to the analysis, in the final section, of the need for a common European (legal) culture as a precondition to the Europeanisation of private law.
It is worth noting that two dimensions of culture are identifiable in the Treaty structure. While it provides for the construction of a European cultural policy,105 it also establishes the foundations for the protection and promotion of the diversities of national cultures and identities via the principle of unitas in diversitate. Unity and diversity are competing characteristics of the European space; while the former underpins integration, particularly in terms of the creation of a harmonised body of norms to regulate transactions and facilitate the market, diversity is reflected in the plurality of national cultures, traditions, and identities. Unitas in diversitate, the motto of the ill-fated European Constitution,106 aims to provide the framework for the recognition of these two dimensions of the European space, in line with the dynamics of European integration.
The TEU Preamble provides that the Member States should aim, ‘drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy equality and the rule of law […] to deepen the solidarity between their peoples while respecting their history, their culture and their traditions’ in establishing the European Union. This requires that, while furthering integration via the objectives of the Union (per Article 3 TEU, the construction of an international market, an area of freedom security and justice, and an area of Union citizenship, the development of a common security and defence policy and the facilitation of an ever closer Union), the national and Union institutions must nevertheless respect national diversities.
Article 2 TEU sets out the values of the Union – ‘respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities’ – characterising them as common across the Member States. Moreover, Article 3 TEU advances that the Union must promote social justice, solidarity and ‘economic, social and territorial cohesion’, per the respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, ‘ensur[ing] that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced’. Article 3 thus sets out the cultural as well as economic (the construction of the internal market), political (the promotion of peace and territorial cohesion), social (the promotion of social justice, protection, solidarity and social cohesion) and legal (the area of freedom, security and justice) dimensions of integration.
The Treaties also provide the basis for more overtly positive action on the part of the Union institutions. Thus, Article 4(2) TEU requires the Union respects ‘the equality of Member States before their Treaties as well as their national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures … ’, while Article 67(1) TFEU establishes that ‘[t]he Union shall constitute an area of freedom, security and justice, with respect for fundamental rights and the different legal systems and traditions of the Member States’. Article 167 TFEU further highlights that national identities are worthy of protection, and following Article 151 EC, obliges the EU to ‘contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore’.
The emergence and evolution of the consumer concept in the national context has been outlined above. It was initially introduced at the European level in Union legislation, and putatively clarified via CJEU jurisprudence and the CRD;116 engaging the culture and identity discourse, it allows for the reach of Union legislative efforts to be linked to the unitas in diversitate principle.
Two interrelated considerations are key: the reach (minimum/maximum/targeted maximum) of European harmonisation efforts and the divergent standards of consumer protection existing across the Member States, shaped fundamentally by different concepts of consumer (as it is the consumer identity that gives rise to protection). Both considerations beg the question of whether a single European conceptualisation is feasible.117 Shaped by various factors, including the rationales underpinning consumer protection and particularly, the aims of doing justice, the Member States might provide for higher or lower levels of consumer protection via national private law norms. As these rules might constitute national barriers to trade, it falls to the European institutions, having the aim of promoting the internal market, to challenge them. This sets a high threshold for such provisions, which promote consumer protection interests but also potentially undermine trade. As Union legislation has been promulgated, each Member State has faced issues of implementation, concerning the delineation of the relevant legislation. Ultimately therefore, post-implementation, the scope for divergence in national levels of consumer protection is shaped by the reach of Union legislation, which determines not only the modifications required in national law to ensure satisfactory compliance with Union norms,118 if any, but also the interpretative approach of the CJEU.
The focus here falls on directives as most consumer legislation is promulgated in this form. Two simplifications can be drawn at the outset. A directive of a minimum harmonisation nature affords the Member States discretion to determine the level of protection – and the breadth of the consumer concept – within the national system, providing this satisfies the minimum set out in the directive. Essentially, minimum harmonisation allows Member States to provide for a higher level of protection than envisaged by the Union legislature, thereby maintaining the possibility for divergent levels of protection across the European space. In contrast, a directive providing for maximum harmonisation, strictly understood, removes the latitude permitting the Member States to establish or maintain a more stringent body of protection – or indeed, a broader concept of consumer – than established by the Union legislature. Consequently, it removes the scope for divergence in levels of protection between and across domestic law and the Union regime.
As concerns surrounding the interpretation of Union norms, or the non-compliance of national law with the Union legislation, generally find their way before the CJEU, its interpretative approach is significant. Two related considerations are pertinent: on the one hand, the judicial development of a common, Europeanised119 notion of consumer, which is absent from Union legislation, and on the other, the recognition of the social, cultural and linguistic dimensions shaping consumer protection in the national legal orders.
This section has provided an outline of unitas in diversitate, building on the brief analysis of the evolution of the consumer concept at the national level. Unitas in diversitate intends to institutionalise the protection of diversities, serving as a guiding principle for legislative development and judicial interpretation, by promoting, as Hendry explains, unity but avoiding uniformity and diversity, avoiding fragmentation,134 within Member States in the context of the harmonisation – and potentially, construction of a uniform body of norms – of European law. It provides a basis for the consideration of the reciprocal influences of culture and tradition, the evolution of the Nation State, and the legal development occurring within and beyond these territorial boundaries, in light of the promotion of uniformity for integration purposes via the Europeanisation of law. Against this background, and building on the idea introduced above – as to the recognition of multiple identities and belongings, and that neither the national nor the European consumer constitutes a mere legal concept but is also an identity deriving from culture and tradition – it is advanced that such a perspective need not exclude all reference to the breadths of consumer cultures continuing to exist across the nation states (or indeed beyond). Such a pluralist perspective rather suggests that national conceptualisations of consumer might shape (that is, as opposed to be merely transferred to, confirmed or rejected at the European level) consumer culture in a multilevel construct of protection.
A. Is there a Need for a Common European (Legal) Culture as a Prerequisite to the Europeanisation of Law?
Private law development has been inherently tied to the emergence of the State, and thus, to the cultures and traditions that have evolved therein. The recognition of the diversities of the Nation States in the EU context has been introduced above, generating its characteristics of commonality and diversity and shaping its plural nature. This gives rise to the unitas in diversitate paradox, where diversity is deemed worthy of protection, and yet also deemed problematic, undermining the effect of harmonisation efforts, considered necessary for the proper functioning of the market.
It is not yet possible to identify a single, common or explicit conceptualisation either of culture, tradition or identity that permeates the European space. Rather, there are various understandings, spilling over from the national levels, relevant to European integration and legal development. This section aims to uncover whether a single (and necessarily common) European (legal) culture should constitute a precondition to European legal development, or whether a pluralist perspective (which might putatively encompass a common or shared culture at the European level) is rather more favourable in light of private law’s dynamic evolution and the context of its Europeanisation. The need for the ‘bridging’ of gaps between national legal cultures and traditions135 has long been a lingering concern in private law scholarship136 and would arguably be facilitated by the construction of a European culture. Two possibilities can be advanced. On the one hand, reference might be made to the development of a single European culture, apparently deemed common across the Member States (per the unity that seemingly subsists from the ius commune) as a prerequisite to European legal development. On the other hand, the existence of a plurality of legal cultures within and beyond the European sphere137 (and the scope for maintenance of the diversity to which this gives rise) could be understood in itself as forming part of any emerging European culture, which is then not necessarily single or common but rather constitutive of the multiplicity and diversity of the European space.
Another approach can be identified from the scholarship of Duncan Kennedy, who has highlighted the significance of the identity and rights discourses across almost the entire breadth of law.145 In the same vein, it has long been recognised that the people of Europe are ‘interested parties’ in the construction of an EU legal order; in Van Gend en Loos, the CJEU highlighted that the ‘Treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the Contracting States … confirmed by the Preamble to the Treaty which refers not only to governments but to peoples … the nationals of the States brought together in the Community are called upon to’.146 Individuals enjoy rights as European citizens, expressly through the Treaty and via the obligations imposed on EU institutions, Member States and individuals.147 Moreover, individuals and groups can organise themselves (or be organised) and construct their own space, culture and identity. This furthers the understanding introduced above pertaining to the mutual influences of the emergence of the Nation States, national cultures, traditions and identities and private law. In the European context, this potential is particularly clear in relation to contract, which distinguishes between workers,148 consumers, and tenants, amongst others, inherently connected to the local, national or transnational community. In each case, including that of the consumer, it is the identification of the individual, as e.g. the consumer, which gives rise to protection via national and Union norms.
The European project is conceived not as a single process but rather as a number of reflexive processes shaped by determinations including ‘identity, power, will, order, and becoming’.149 The difficulties in coherently defining and conceptualising culture and tradition, and furthermore, identity and community, are paramount.150 With the creation of a community of European States, the idea of a ‘whole’ European identity, either conflicting with or existing alongside a plurality of – not necessarily national or territorial151 – identities, has emerged but has been difficult to conceive, particularly following enlargement.
If, as considered above, it is the existence of a shared culture in the Nation State context that founds the construction of national identity, these cultures must be understood to belong to modernity, suggesting that national legal cultures and traditions also share commonalities despite apparent divergences. Yet as neither culture nor tradition nor identity is tied solely to the nation, the recognition of the existence of a plurality of cultures and identities within a territorial space removes the precondition of a specific connection between culture (or identity) and State,156 bringing to the fore the scope for European and transnational conceptualisations. This further suggests that any notion of a European culture, tradition or identity would not entirely replace the national affiliation; consequently, personal, group and community affiliations must be distinguished, allowing individuals (or the ‘European man’ to which Collins refers)157 to establish and maintain close ties to a number of social constructions.
If this suggests that like identities in general, identities within the European context could be conceived of as multiple and plural, depending on perception,161 whereby European identity both derives from and forms part of a shared European culture, existing alongside the national, it then becomes necessary to consider how a plurality of identities might be organised within the European context. Two approaches can be identified. Sen engages the notion of membership in his work on identity; with reference to the organisation of a plurality of identities, he highlights the need for a hierarchical construction of the divergent conceptions pertaining to each individual.162 In contrast, and with particular reference to European integration, Bañkowski rejects this vertical, ‘Russian Doll-type’ interaction of identities, whereby each would exist within the other and rather supports a dynamic, ‘horizontal interlocking’ where the ‘larger’ does not necessarily subsume the smaller.163 This understanding potentially works alongside the European space as multi-level in its nature,164 refuting the need for a single common identity, culture or tradition but instead, multiple, interdependent ones.
In the 1980s, it was famously remarked that the EU could not be conceived either as a State or an international organisation,177 neither as a federation nor a regime.178 This ambiguity continues to exist, especially in light of failed attempts at federalisation and as attempts at fiscal union continue to falter. Indeed, European integration and the Europeanisation of private law together constitute a ‘transformative process’,179 or rather, sets of processes, occurring within an increasingly globalised space.180 These dynamic processes, therefore, continuously challenge any staticism that has seemingly been concretised at either the national or European level. These discussions are fundamental to the context in which these processes occur, concerning in particular, the notion of culture.
This paper initially set out the relationship between the emergence of the State, alongside its culture and tradition, and private law development. Thereafter, it aimed to uncover the meaning of unitas in diversitate and examine the dimensions relevant to the Europeanisation of private law. In light of the Treaty provisions, this analysis has allowed for the exploration of what Hendry has deemed the paradox of unitas in diversitate, that is, the promotion of respect for and protection of diversities on the one hand, and the promotion of that which is common (and which potentially leads to unification) on the other. In light of the reach of Union private law harmonisation, the analysis aims to illustrate – with specific reference to the example of the concept of the consumer – the ideological underpinnings of these approaches.
The European space has been advanced as one within which a plurality of cultures and traditions (and thus, identities) exist, and within which these can be established as ‘self’ and interact with the ‘other’, increasingly within a globalised space.181 The understanding advanced in light of the analysis undertaken suggests that neither culture nor identity requires, as a prerequisite for its formation, a connection with the State. It similarly suggests that, given the interactions arising, both within and beyond the European space, neither culture nor identity should be understood as single but rather as multiple. This is the first consideration that calls into question the need for a distinct, common European identity or culture.
Thus, instead of aiming to identify a single European concept of culture, which permeates the national, Union and potentially international levels of regulation, it has rather been suggested that the plurality of cultures and identities should be engaged as a defining characteristic of European legal development as opposed to a hurdle. The pluralist perspective is understood to underpin the scope for the private law development within a multi-level structure; its foundations are reflected empirically in the multiplicity of orders, cultures and traditions, sources of law, dispute resolution bodies and legal actors that exist within the European space. It has been recognised that as a perspective of legal development, pluralism is not unproblematic; rather, it reflects and promotes vertical and horizontal conflicts of different characterisations, and gives rise to concerns of fragmentation arising from a lack of coherence, both of which are deemed to be particularly problematic beyond the Nation State given the absence of a grounded framework lending a degree of systemisation to governance.
On the one hand, it has been acknowledged that a plurality of conceptualisations of culture and identity exist in the national contexts, underpinning which are diverse values, which – it has increasingly come to be recognised – shape private law development at the national and Union levels. Moreover, it is suggested that the conceptualisation of culture which seems to be taking the lead at the European level, i.e. the notion of market culture, is not satisfactory to engage private law in its entirety. This broad appreciation of the European space characterises the context in which the shifting conceptualisations of private law are explored. It is submitted that the focus, which until recently has been significant, on the promotion of uniformity (and thus commonality) via the harmonisation, and previously codification, of legal norms undermines a pluralist perspective and also the potential to appreciate the dynamic nature and shifting conceptualisations of private law.
These preliminary conclusions do not suggest that the building blocks of a European (legal) culture cannot be identified; nor do they suggest that there exists no scope for them to emerge and be refined. Rather, these conclusions are engaged and advanced to support the argument that there does not exist a basis upon which a single legal culture or identity must be advanced as a prerequisite of legal development, to the exclusion of the others existing within the European space. Indeed, it is possible that, in light of the future evolution of private law, and Union law more broadly, a common culture might indeed emerge at the European level.
The author has confirmed that there are no competing interests.
1Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition (2nd edn, Stanford University Press 1985) 9.
2Peter G Stein, Roman Law in European History (CUP 2005) 53–54.
3Stein (n 2) 53–54; Merryman (n 1) 9.
5Reinhard Zimmerman, ‘Savigny’s Legacy: Legal History, Comparative Law and the Emergence of a European Legal Science’ (1996) 112 LQR 576.
6In the EU context, the focus of this paper, the Union regime has been described as a ‘post-national constellation’ (originally expressed by Jürgen Habermas, Die postnationale Konstellation und die Zukunft der Demokratie (Grin Verlag 2003)), existing in a ‘post-democratic era’, Jürgen Habermas, ‘Europe’s Post-Democratic Era’, The Guardian, (London, 10 November 2011) <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/10/jurgen-habermas-europe-post-democratic> accessed 19 September 2014.
8In reality, these terms should not be mixed; for the purposes of brevity, the distinctions are not explored.
9Jayantha Dhanapala, ‘Globalization and the Nation State’ (University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, 7 March 2001) <http://www.un.org/disarmament/HomePage/HR/docs/2001/2001Apr07_Colorado.pdf> accessed: 14 April 2012.
10See Caruso who refers to ‘State-making’ (development of post-national institutions) and state-making (re the nation state); Daniela Caruso, ‘Private Law and State-Making in the Age of Globalisation’ (2006) 39 NYU.J.Int.Law.Pol. 1.
11Ralf Michaels and Nils Jansen, ‘Private Law Beyond the State? Europeanization, Globalization, Privatization’ (2006) 54 AJCL 843; furthermore, states could utilise law to satisfy their goals (the determination of which also shaped private law): Thomas Wilhelmsson, ‘Varieties of Welfarism in Contract Law’ (2004) 10 ELJ 712.
12Of course, the 19th century cannot be said to be the birth moment of codification; indeed, the Prussian ALR was enacted at the end of the 18th century, in 1794 – so the codification movement is older.
13James Gordley, ‘Myths of the French Civil Code’ (1994) 42 AJCL 459.
14Christian Joerges, ‘The Science of Private Law and the Nation State’ in Francis Snyder (ed), The Europeanisation of Law – The Legal Effects of European Integration (Hart 2000) 47–82, 47–48.
15Franz Wieacker, A History of Private Law in Europe with Particular Reference to Germany (T Weir trans., Clarendon Press 1995) 341–349 and 484.
16Caruso highlights, that via this reference to ‘organising categories … codification allowed the incipient state to perform an allegedly essential function of government’; Caruso (n 10) 25.
17For an explanation in greater detail, see R Michaels, ‘Post-Critical Private International Law : From Politics to Technique’ in Horatia M Watt and Diego PF Arroyo (eds), Private International Law and Global Governance (OUP 2014) 54–67, 61.
18Concerns were initially advanced over a decade ago; Study Group, ‘Social Justice in European Contract Law: a Manifesto’ (2004) 10 ELJ 653.
19The idea that national legislation is authoritative ‘rationae imperii’, ‘quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem’ (Ulpian, D.I.4.I., pr.); Robert Alexy and others, Begriff und Geltung des Rechts (Karl 2002) 142 et seq.
20See arguments cited within Reinhard Zimmermann, ‘Codification: History and Present Significance of an Idea’ (1995) 3 ERPL 95, 103–105. Zimmermann, referring to Eastern European codification, highlights the continuing relevance of codification, appertaining to the understanding of law’s ‘systematic whole’.
22This notion of ‘potentially unrestrained’ becomes relevant if we engage what is often conceived as an overarching understanding that codification should be all encompassing.
23Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (2nd edn, Routledge 2005) 75.
24Helge Dedek, ‘Law as Culture/Rights as Culture: Some Historical Thoughts on the ‘Western’ Legal Tradition’, Paper Presented at Conference on European Legal Culture, University of Oxford, (16 December 2011) (on file with author).
25Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre IX, Chapitre VI, (Barrillot 1750).
26Friedrich Carl von Savigny, ‘Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft’ in Hans Hattenhauer (ed), Thibaut und Savigny: Ihre programmatischen Schrifften (F Vahlen 1973) 95 et seq.
28Dennis Patterson and others, ‘Statecraft, the Market State and the Development of European Legal Culture’ EUI Working Paper 2010/10, 4.
29Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (HUP 2000) 103–104.
30Hannah Arendt, ‘Understanding and Politics (The Difficulties in Understanding)’ in Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954: Formation, Exile and Totalitarianism (Schocken Books 1994) 307–327.
31Paul S Berman, Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders (CUP 2012) 144.
32Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Blackwell 2000) 37.
33Habermas, ‘Europe’s Post-Democratic Era’ (n 6).
34Michelle Everson, ‘Legal Constructions of the Consumer’ in F. Trentmann (ed), The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World (Berg 2006) 99–121.
35That is, in terms of the concept of functional differentiation: the demand for law from the social, Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (WD Halls trans., Free Press 1984); ‘What is, then, the practical cause of the genesis of law? It is, replies the author, the need to guarantee the conditions of existence of society’: Émile Durkheim, ‘La science positive de la morale en Allemagne’, (1887) 24 Extrait de la Revue Philosophique, 33–142; 275–284 (English translation, ‘Jurists?’ (1986) 15 Economy and Society 346, 348–349); Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Suhrkamp Verlag 1997).
36Niklas Luhmann, Political Theory in the Welfare State (J Bednarz Jr trans., de Gruyter 1990).
37Niklas Luhmann, A Sociological Theory of Law (Routledge 1985) 105; Peer Zumbansen, ‘Transnational Comparative Theory and Practice’, Osgoode Hall Working Paper 1–2012, 12.
38In the context of business contract relations, see Stewart Macauley, ‘Non-Contractual Relations in Business’ (1963) 28 Am.Soc.Rev. 55.
39Henry S Maine, ‘From Status to Contract’ in Ancient Law (Murray 1861).
40Materialisation is understood broadly to reflect the drafting of norms for a particular purpose. Its trends were discussed in Weber’s analysis of legal systems Max Weber, Economic and Sociology, Vol.II (G Roth and C Wittig edn, Berkeley Press 1969); notwithstanding, the development of the discourse, between the formalists, promoting the maintenance of the autonomy of law, in respect of political and social concerns, and those promoting an understanding of law, incorporating concerns as to social justice arising in modern society, really came to the fore with critical legal scholarship.
41Michelle Everson, ‘Legal Constructions of the Consumer’ in Frank Trentmann (ed), The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World (Berg 2006) 99–121, 107.
42Often in cross-cultural analysis, Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture are employed: a) power distance (the manner in which inequality is dealt with); b) uncertainty avoidance (how uncertainty is dealt with); c) individualism and collectivism (the individual/collective relationship); d) masculinity and femininity and e) long-term versus short-term orientation: Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviours, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations (2nd edn, Sage Publications 2001). It has also been recognised that this framework for analysis might be useful in the European context: Marieke de Mooij, Consumer Behaviour and Culture: Consequences for Global Marketing and Advertising (Sage Publications 2004) 36.
43The CJEU has referred to the definition of the consumer per ‘social, cultural and linguistic factors’. Wilhelmsson has argued for greater consideration of the cultural in particular: Thomas Wilhelmsson, ‘The European Average Consumer – a Legal Fiction?’ in Thomas Wilhelmsson et al (eds), Private Law and the Many Cultures of Europe (Kluwer 2007) 243–268.
44Thomas Wilhelmsson, ‘Harmonizing Unfair Commercial Practices Law: The Cultural and Social Dimensions’ (2006) 44 Os.Hall.L.J. 461. Wilhelmsson also references Michael Solomon, Gary Bamossy and Søren Askegaard (eds), Consumer Behaviour, A European Perspective (Prentice Hall 1999), noting also the global perspective.
45Brigitta Lurger, ‘Old and New Insights for the Protection of Consumers in European Private Law in the Wake of the Global Economic Crisis’ in Roger Brownsword and others (eds), The Foundations of European Private Law (Hart 2011) 89–113, 106.
46The discussion in international constitutionalism concerning the continuing significance of the state, its characters and constituent parts, is relevant but cannot be considered in depth.
47Peer Zumbansen, ‘The Future of Legal Theory’ (2010) 6 CLPE Research Paper Series 3, 8.
48Devised by Gary Marks, ‘Structural Policy in the European Community’ in Alberta Sbragia (ed), Europolitics, Institutions and Policymaking in the ‘New’ European Community (The Brookings Institution 1992) 191–225; Gary Marks, ‘Structural Policy and Multi-level Governance in the EC’ in Alan Cafurny and Glenda Rosenthal (eds), The State of the European Community: The Maastricht Debate and Beyond (Lynne Rienner Publications 1993) 391–411.
49Margaret Davies, ‘Legal Pluralism’ in Peter Cane and Herbert M. Kritzer (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (OUP 2010) 805–827, 805.
50Arguably reflected in an understanding of state versus non-state: Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Toward a New Legal Common Sense (2nd edn, Butterworths 2002) 156.
51Gunther Teubner, ‘Global Bukowina: Legal Pluralism in the World Society’ in Gunther Teubner (ed), Global Law Without a State (Dartmouth 1997) 3–28.
52de Sousa Santos (n 50) 200 et seq.
53Roderick A McDonald and David Sandomierski, ‘Against Nomopolies’ (2006) 57 North.Ireland.Leg.Q. 610, 614.
54John Griffiths, ‘What is Legal Pluralism?’ (1986) 24 Journal of Legal Pluralism 1, 4.
55Sally E Merry, ‘Legal Pluralism’ (1988) 22 Law and Society Review 869, 873–874; Merry distinguishes the different contexts in which legal pluralism arises, referencing the challenges and different scholarly foundations. Thus, pluralism might also arise within national – and it is submitted – postnational contexts. The national contexts typically explored include Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
56Brian Tamanaha, ‘Understanding Legal Pluralism: Past to Present, Local to Global’ (2008) 30 Syd.Law.Rev. 375, 377–386, examining legal pluralism in medieval Europe and in respect of colonisation.
57Patterson and others (n 28) 1.
58In the context of the economic crisis, in particular, increasing nationalist tendencies can be identified, not only in law but elsewhere. For example, consider the surge of Euroscepticism in the UK in recent months, and in those countries affected directly by austerity measures imposed in respect of the effect of the crisis, particularly in Greece.
59‘Already at first glance, it becomes clear that many examples of a ‘global law without a state’ do not in fact contain a flat-out rejection of state-based official law’: Gralf-Peter Calliess and Peer Zumbansen, Rough Consensus and Running Code: A Theory of Transnational Private Law (Hart 2010) 19 (footnotes omitted).
60For the use of this term, see Gunther Teubner, ‘Breaking Frames: The Global Interplay of Legal and Social Systems’ (1997) 45 AJCL 149, 157.
61Nils Jansen, The Making of Legal Authority: Non-Legislative Codifications in Historical and Comparative Perspective (OUP 2010) 7, instead of applying the term ‘private actor’ to describe, eg, academics.
62For example, of UNDROIT, the Lando Commission, and the Acquis Group (Acquis Group (eds), Contract I: Pre-Contractual Obligations, Conclusion of Contract, Unfair Terms (Sellier 2007); Acquis Group (eds), Contract II: General Provisions, Delivery of Goods, Package Travel and Payment Services (Sellier 2009).
63See Fabrizio Cafaggi, ‘Private Regulation in European Private Law’ EUI Working Paper RSCAS 2009/31; Fabrizio Cafaggi, ‘Private Law-Making and European Integration: Where Do They Meet, When Do They Conflict?’ in Dawn Oliver, Tony Prosser and Richard Rawlings (eds), The Regulatory State (OUP 2010) 201–228.
64Anne-Marie Slaughter, ‘International Law in a World of Liberal States’ (1995) 6 EJIL 503, 518.
65The embers of the state’s dominance thus continue to burn much more brightly than those of the code. Globalisation and the apparent decline of the Westphalian state model, as well as the surge in respect for pluralism and diversity, has of course stifled these vestiges.
66While this consideration extends beyond this paper, it is worth noting that it might reflect Joerges’ assertion that European integration ‘can be understood and re-constructed as a response to the failures of the Weberian nation state’; Christian Joerges, ‘Unity in Diversity as Europe’s Vocation and Conflicts Law as Europe’s Constitutional Form’ (2010) LSE ‘Europe in Question’ Series, LEQS, 2010/28, 6.
68In 2005, Koskenniemi set out his normative concerns with the notion of global legal pluralism, and in particular, increasing fragmentation in Martti Koskenniemi, ‘Global Legal Pluralism: Multiple Regimes and Multiple Modes of Thought’ (Harvard University, Keynote Speech, 05 March 2005) <http://www.helsinki.fi/eci/Publications/Koskenniemi/MKPluralism-Harvard-05d.pdf> accessed 14 April 2012; see also, Martti Koskenniemi, ‘Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law’ (2006) UN.A/CN.4/L.682.
70The impact of fragmentation will also diverge across the Member States; prima facie, if coherence and systemisation is more important in civil law countries, based on the almost-complete private codifications where gaps filled by the relevant (generally legislative) authorities, arguably they will be more affected than the common law systems by the fragmentation engendered by the Europeanisation of private law.
71CRD, 2011/83/EU, Recitals 6 and 7.
72As the Social Justice Study Group has recognised, the European Commission generally advances consumer protection norms that have the aim of protecting weaker parties but which also aim to facilitate the operation of the market, via market correction. See Study Group (n 18) 661.
73European Commission, ‘Proposal for a Directive on Consumer Rights’ COM(2008) 614, 2.
74Fabrizio Cafaggi, ‘Introduction’ in Fabrizio Cafaggi (ed), The Institutional Framework of European Private Law (OUP 2006) 6. Other means of conflict resolution would include, eg, the open method of coordination as a means of governance; Walter van Gerven, ‘Bringing (Private) Laws Closer to Each Other at the European Level’ in Fabrizio Cafaggi (ed), The Institutional Framework of European Private Law (OUP 2009) 37–78, 60. Pluralism as empirical fact is further reflected in the scope for conflicts, of a vertical and horizontal nature; such conflicts are deemed to be a result of the absence of hierarchy in the legal orders, arising as a result of the multiplicity of legal sources and of the claims of dispute resolution bodies to decide and regulate.
77Initially developed in relation to conformity of specific legal rules between national and Union law in Marleasing (n 75) and Joined Cases C-397–401/01 Pfeiffer  ECR I-8835, Judgement, para 116, as well potentially with ECtHR jurisprudence, as the CJEU recognised in C-399/11 Melloni nyr, Judgement, para 50.
78Walter van Gerven, ‘Private Law in a Federal Perspective’ in Roger Brownsword and others (eds), The Foundations of European Private Law (Hart 2011) 337–351, 345–346.
79Neil Walker, ‘The Idea of Constitutional Pluralism’ (2002) 65 MLR 317; Miguel P Maduro, ‘Interpreting European Law: Judicial Adjudication in a Context of Constitutional Pluralism’ (2007) 1 EJLS.
80It should be noted that this statement does not engage the significant discussions of legitimacy and authority, which extend far beyond the scope of this paper.
81Lucinda Miller, The Emergence of EU Contract Law: Exploring Europeanization (OUP 2011) 155, citing Neil MacCormick, ‘Democracy, Subsidiarity and Citizenship in the European Commonwealth’ (1997) 16 Law and Philosophy 331.
82To avoid becoming embroiled in broader constitutional discourses that extend beyond this paper, European law is understood to be authoritative and have normative force, notwithstanding that it does not exist or operate within specific territorial boundaries, tied to a central power.
83Daniel Augenstein, ‘Identifying the European Union: Legal Integration and European Communities’ in Daniel Augenstein (ed), ‘Integration Through Law’ Revisited: The Making of the European Polity (Ashgate 2012) 99–112, 108.
84Private autonomy needs to be limited in respect of fundamental rights, including, predominantly, those that formally fell within constitutionally-protected considerations. This understanding can allow for a connection to be drawn within consumer law to the extent that an analogy might be drawn between the parties traditionally protected by the constitution (the weak citizens, in respect of the stronger state) and those protected by consumer law (the weak consumer, in respect of the stronger seller/supplier).
85For example, Art.8, right to privacy: Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd  UKHL 22.
86Daniela Caruso, ‘The Missing View of the Cathedral: The Private Law Paradigm of European Legal Integration’ (1997) 3 ELJ 3, 5.
87The focus on codification as a means of achieving unification is seen in European Parliament, ‘Resolution of the European Parliament’ OJ 1981 C 158/400. For many years, there was a dominant focus, in terms of legislative options, on codification. There has been a marked shift in the approach of both the Parliament and the Commission. In particular, this can be seen in light of the Commission’s adoption of Option Four of the 2010 Green Paper (European Commission, ‘Green Paper from the Commission on Policy Options for Progress Towards a European Contract Law for Consumers and Businesses of 1.07.2010’, COM(2010) 348 final), from one based on the codification of private law rules, to an emerging European private law based on the one hand, on the continual construction of the acquis, and on the other, on the notion of “optionality” as it exists in the Proposal for a Common European Sales Law (‘Proposal on a Common European Sales Law’, COM(2011) 635 final). It should be noted that this proposal was withdrawn in December 2014, with the aim of adopting a modified proposal dealing with online sales.
88Cafaggi, ‘Private Law-Making and European Integration’ (n 63) especially 205. The notion that law operating within a multi-level, pluralist context and the scope for the engagement of comparative analysis therein – for these purposes – cannot be understood comprehensively in the context of a discourse in which law is conceived within the boundaries of the state resonates in the discourse on the emergence of ‘new’ legal orders (including the lex mercatoria, regimes of self-regulation, ICANN and so on).
89The shifts in the Commission from minimum to maximum to targeted maximum harmonisation should be considered: European Commission, ‘Green Paper on the Review of the Consumer Acquis’ COM(2006) 744 and European Commission, ‘Proposal for a Directive on Consumer Rights’, COM(2008) 614 final. Minimum harmonisation establishes a minimum level of protection with which the Member States must comply, without precluding the introduction of more restrictive norms at the national level. Maximum harmonisation essentially removes the discretion of the Member States and expands that of the Union. Legislation of a maximum nature purports to establish a set of rules uniformly applicable across the Member States; there exists no freedom for divergent norms of either a more or less stringent standard, such that the Member States cannot avoid the reach of European legislation. Targeted maximum harmonisation involves the identification of the key areas in which barriers to trade have arisen consequent to minimum harmonisation and the imposition of fully harmonised norms and standards of protection therein.
90Hannes Rösler, ‘The Transformation of Contractual Justice: A Historical and Comparative Account of the Impact of Consumption’ in Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz (ed), The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law (Edward Elgar 2011) 327–358.
91Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, ‘Judicial Activism of the European Court of Justice and the Development of the European Social Model in Anti-Discrimination and Consumer Law’ EUI Working Paper 2009/19, 8.
92Christian Joerges and Christoph Schmid, ‘Towards Proceduralization of Private Law in the European Multi-Level System’ in Arthur Hartkamp and others (eds), Towards a European Civil Code (4th edn, Kluwer 2011) 277–309, 288. This is discussed further below in relation to the notion of ‘market culture’.
93Jac GI Rinkes, ‘European Consumer Law: Making Sense’ in Christian Twigg-Flesner and others (eds), The Yearbook of Consumer Law 2008 (Ashgate 2007) 3–18, 3: ‘The question, however, is whether consumer law is market behaviour law, or law for the benefit of the consumer?’.
94Christoph Schmid, ‘The Instrumentalist Conception of the Acquis Communautaire in Consumer Law and its Implications on a European Contract Law Code’ (2005) 1 ERCL 211.
95Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, ‘European Private Regulatory Law: A Plea for New Thinking’ 15 et seq (on file with author).
96Paul Craig, The Lisbon Treaty: Law, Politics and Treaty Reform (OUP 2011), and in particular, Chapter 5 on competences, 155–192.
97Matthias Kumm, ‘Who is Afraid of the Total Constitution? Constitutional Rights as Principles and the Constitutionalisation of Private Law’ (2006) 7 GLJ 341.
98Duncan Kennedy, ‘Thoughts on Coherence, Social Values and National Tradition in Private Law’ in Martijn Hesselink (ed), The Politics of a European Civil Code (Kluwer 2006) 9–31, 9.
99Hugh Collins, ‘Governance Implications for the European Union of the Changing Nature of Private Law’ in Fabrizio Cafaggi and Horatia Muir Watt (eds), Making European Private Law: Governance Design (Edward Elgar 2008) 269–286, 278–279.
100That is to say, as Sassen has advanced with regard to global governance, private law, and European private law, necessitates the local and national levels; it is dependent on them. See Saskia Sassen, ‘Globalization or Denationalization?’ (2003) 10 Rev.Int.Pol.Econ. 1.
101Franz Werro (ed), Droit civil et convention européenne des droits de l’homme (Schulthess 2006) 135 et seq.
102Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz (ed), The Constitutionalization of Private Law (OUP 2014) 1.
103de Sousa Santos (n 50) 436–437.
104Marc Amstutz, ‘Interlegality in European Private Law: A Question of Method?’ in Christian Joerges and Tommi Ralli (eds), European Constitutionalism Without Private Law: Private Law Without Democracy, Recon Report No.14 (Arena 2011) 55–69.
105Rachel Crauford-Smith, ‘Cultural Policy’ in Paul Craig and Grainne de Búrca (eds), The Evolution of EU Law (2nd edn, OUP 2011) 869–894. Notwithstanding the absence (until the early 1990s) of a European cultural policy, alongside the broad division of competences between the EU and Member States, it has become a matter of increasing significance at both the EU and national levels. The Maastricht Treaty (Art.151(1) EC) initially introduced the notion of a European cultural policy into the Treaty structure.
106Art.I-8, Draft European Constitutional Treaty, OJ C 310/1, 16.12.2004. See further, Jen Hendry, ‘‘Unity in Diversity’: Questions of (Legal) Culture in the European Union’ (2008) 3 Journal of Comparative Law 289. Joerges has argued that the notion of unitas in diversitate can be maintained by virtue of engagement with the notion of understanding European private law as a type of conflicts law: Joerges (n 66) 1.
107Also in the Maastricht decision: BVerfG 89, 155; 2 BvR 2134, 2159/92; 12 October 1993.
108With reference to the notion of the ‘democratic formative action’, derived from the principle of democracy, encompassed in the rule of law principles, set out in Art.1 and 20 of the Basic Law, to be protected in line with the eternity clause in Art. 79(3), even where constitutional changes are made, eg, in respect of Germany’s membership of the EU; BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, 30 June 2009, para 249.
109BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, 30 June 2009, paras 240–241.
110Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, ‘German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht BVerfG) 2 BvE 2/08, 30.6.2009 – Organstreit Proceedings Between Members of the German Parliament and the Federal Government’ (2011) 7 ERCL 528.
111See recently, a particularly interesting article dealing with the cases discussed: Armin von Bogdandy and Stephan Schill, ‘Overcoming Absolute Primacy: Respect for National Identity under the Lisbon Treaty’ (2011) 48 CMLR 1.
112Declaration on European Identity, 1973 (12 Bull. EC 118).
113Art. 167(4) and (5) TEU, which provide ‘4. The Union shall take cultural aspects into account in its action under other provisions of the Treaties, in particular in order to respect and to promote the diversity of its cultures … and ‘5.… to contribute … the Council.. shall adopt incentive measures, excluding any harmonisation of the laws and regulations of the Member States’.
114See Jen Hendry, Unitas in Diversitate? On Legal Cultures and the Europeanisation of Law, PhD Thesis (EUI 2009) 18.
115It should be noted, and as becomes clear from the discussion of maximum and minimum harmonisation, that harmonisation in itself does not necessarily aim to undermine diversity; this rather depends on the reach of Union legislation.
116S. 2(1) CRD: ‘any natural person who, in contracts covered by this Directive, is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business, craft or profession’.
117Wilhelmsson questions to what extent it is appropriate that these notions be ‘Europeanised’: Wilhelmsson (n 43) 245, and whether, in reality, it might be the case that such differences exist between national notions of (average) consumer that it is useless to make reference to a European notion.
118DG for Internal Policies, Policy Department: Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs, ‘The Potential Impact of the Consumer Rights Directive on Member States’ Contract Law’ PE 419.606, 2009, 14.
120Thomas Wilhelmsson, ‘Introduction: Harmonization and National Cultures’ in Thomas Wilhelmsson, Elina Paunio and Annika Pohjolainen (eds), Private Law and the Many Cultures of Europe (Kluwer 2007) 3–20, 15–16. The ‘social, cultural or linguistic factors’ as highlighted in C-220/98 Estée Lauder Cosmetics GmbH & Co OHG v Lancaster Group GmbH  ECR I-117, Judgement, para 29.
123C-315/92 Verband Sozialer Wettbewerb eV v Clinique Laboratoires and Estée Lauder Cosmetics  ECR I-317, Opinion of AG Gulmann, para 18.
124Estée Lauder Cosmetics (n 120), Judgement, para 29: ‘ … in particular, it must be determined whether social, cultural or linguistic factors may justify the term `lifting’, used in connection with a firming cream, meaning something different to the German consumer as opposed to consumers in other Member States … ’. As noted above, reference is made to the notion in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, at Recital 18. Furthermore, the CJEU’s scope for engaging in comparative, ‘cross-directive’ reasoning in which it has aimed to achieve coherence between the various consumer directives, would dictate that this Europeanised approach is soon extended across the Union acquis.
125C-101/01 Lindqvist  ECR I-12971, Judgement, para 98.
126Vanessa Mak, ‘Standards of Protection: In Search of the ‘Average Consumer’ of EU Law in the Proposal for a Consumer Rights Directive’ (2011) 19 ERPL 25, 29.
127One very explicit and stark statement has been made by Joerges and Schmid who have sought to highlight the complexity of this type of balancing exercise, and who advance that the CRD ‘unlike the CFR and all other national private-law instruments … deviate[s] from the classic ethical concept of private law, which pursues justice between parties in the individual case (normally communicative, sometimes also distributive justice) as the highest objective. Instead, the CRD sacrifices justice between the parties in favour of providing European businesses with a basic, but uniform, regulatory framework for market transactions with consumers’, Joerges and Schmid (n 94) 277–309, 280. See further below at (n 170).
128Christoph Schmid, ‘The Thesis of the Instrumentalisation of Private Law by the EU in a Nutshell’ in Christian Joerges and Tommi Ralli (eds), European Constitutionalism Without Private Law: Private Law Without Democracy, Recon Report No.14 (Arena 2011) 17–36, 26–27.
130Christoph Schmid, ‘The ECJ as a Constitutional and a Private Law Court – A Methodological Comparison’, (2006) 4 ZERP Diskussionspapier, 11–12.
132It is submitted that a connection can be drawn between this consideration and Unberath and Johnston’s analysis of the CJEU’s ‘double-headed’ approach: while in cases of negative harmonisation the Court has elucidated its reluctance to allow for national provisions based on standards of consumer protection (which might also constitute a restriction to free movement, and ultimately, free trade), in relation to positive European harmonisation, the CJEU has sought to ensure a wide application: Hannes Unberath and Angus Johnston, ‘The Double-Headed Approach of the ECJ Concerning Consumer Protection’ (2007) 44 CMLR 1237, 1281–1282.
133Mak sets out the difficulties that might be faced in national system should any attempt to lower consumer protection become necessary: Mak (n 126) 37–38.
135For the purposes of this paper, legal culture is understood as a localised understanding of culture: thus, the connection of legal culture with a particular community can be used in order to forge an understanding of collective identity; Ralf Michaels, ‘Legal Culture’ in Jürgen Basedow and others (eds), Max Planck Encyclopedia of European Private Law (OUP 2012) 1059–1063, 1060.
136Reinhard Zimmermann, ‘The Present State of European Private Law’ (2009) 57 AJCL 479. More recently, see the speech of Commissioner Reding at the Opening of the European Law Institute: Commissioner Reding, ‘The European Law Institute: Tracing the Path Towards a European Legal Culture’, Speech 11/764; Vienna, 17 November 2011.
137There is an interesting body of literature on the diversity of legal cultures in relation to the development of international law, and particularly, international criminal law. Indeed, the clash of legal cultures was something, which, while of course not at the forefront of the proceedings at Nuremberg, was particularly relevant. See ‘The ‘Flick’ Case’, Nazi War Crime Trials: Nuremberg Military Tribunal, The Green Series, Vol.VI, 119 and ‘The ‘Justice’ Case’, Nazi War Crime Trials: Nuremberg Military Tribunal, The Green Series, Vol.III, 108.
138Kaarlo Tuori, ‘EC Law: An Independent Legal Order or a Post-Modern Jack-in-the-Box?’ in Lars D. Eriksson and Samuli Hurri (eds), Dialectic of Law and Reality: Readings in Finnish Legal Theory (Helsinki Faculty of Law 1999) 359–415.
139For an elaboration of this view, see Thomas Wilhelmsson, ‘Private Law in the EU: Harmonised or Fragmentised Europeanisation?’ (2002) 10 ERPL 77.
140Kaarlo Tuori, ‘Towards a Theory of Transnational Law: A Very First Draft’ (2010) (on file with the author), 23.
141Wilhelmsson, ‘Introduction’ (n 120), pp. 6–7. See especially, Kaarlo Tuori, ‘Legal Culture and General Societal Culture’ in Thomas Wilhelmsson and others (eds), Private Law and the Many Cultures of Europe (Kluwer 2007) 23–35, 26, on the basis of the notion of law as Volksrecht developed by Savigny; Friedrich Carl von Savigny, System des heutigen römischen Rechts I (Neudruck der Ausgabe, 1840; Scientia Verlag, 1981); Tuori asserts that the ‘fast-moving’ nature of legal practice generates a gap between legal culture and general societal culture.
142The flagship initiative of the ‘innovation union’ under Europe 2020 looks to establish ‘knowledge alliances’; European Commission, ‘Communication, Europe 2020: A Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth’ COM(2010) 2020 final, 03.03.2010 12–13 for a summary.
143Francis Snyder, ‘Governing Economic Globalisation – Global Legal Pluralism and European Law’ (1999) 5 ELJ 334.
144See Thomas Lundmark, Charting the Divide Between Common and Civil Law (OUP 2012) especially Chapter 4 et seq.
145Duncan Kennedy, ‘Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought: 1850–2000’ in David M. Trubek and Alvaro Santos (eds), The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (CUP 2006) 19–73, 63.
146C-32/84 Van Gend en Loos  ECR I-0779, Judgement, para 12.
148Case 75/63 Hoekstra  ECR 177.
149Philip Allott, ‘The Concept of European Union’ (1999) 2 Cam.YB.Eur.Leg.Stud. 31, 49.
150There is a body of literature – summarised in Richard Swedberg, ‘The Idea of ‘Europe’ and the Origin of the European Union – A Sociological Approach’ (1994) 23 Zeitschrift für Soziologie 378 – which looks to the notion of the ‘European idea’, with its origins in ‘a very much more distant past – often stretching as far back as the Middle Ages or even to Antiquity’, 378. Analogies can be drawn in this respect with the notion of the development of a common legal culture from the lex mercatoria, see Reinhard Zimmermann, ‘Derecho Romano y Cultura Europea’ (2010) 18 Revista de Derecho Privado 5.
151At least within Europe, with both the jurisdiction of the Council of Europe, and the EU.
152Allott (n 149) 31–32, citing Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, London; 1991) 224.
153Philip Allott, ‘The Crisis of European Constitutionalism: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe’ (1997) 34 CMLR 439, 489.
154Allott, ‘The Concept of European Union’ (n 149) 32.
155Joseph HH Weiler, ‘The Transformation of Europe’ in Joseph H.H. Weiler (ed), The Constitution of Europe: ‘Do the New Clothes Have an Emperor?’ And Other Essays on European Integration (CUP 1999) 10–101, 95.
156Lawrence Friedman, The Republic of Choice – Law, Authority and Culture (HUP 1990) 3–4.
157Hugh Collins, ‘European Private Law and the Cultural Identity of States’ (1995) 3 ERPL 353, 357.
158Including those of the consumer, the tenant, the worker and so forth.
159Micklitz, in respect of Viking and Laval, ties this to Durkheim’s ‘cult of the individual’. Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, ‘Three Questions to the Opponents of the Viking and Laval Judgements’ Opinion Paper, Observatoire Social Européen 2012–08. (C-341/05 Laval v Svenska Byggnadsarbetareförbundet  ECR I-11767 and C-438/05 International Transport Workers’ Federation and Finnish Seamen’s Union v Viking Line  ECR I-10779).
160Patterson and others (n 28) 16.
161It has been asserted that culture is formed on the basis of what is perceived – ‘the identity … of any culture is thus aspectival rather than essential’, such that identity, therefrom deriving can be plural: James Tully, Strange Multiplicity – Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (CUP 1995) 10.
162Armatya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (W.W. Norton & Co 2006) 18 et seq.
163Zenon Bañkowski, ‘The Journey of the European Ideal’ in Andrew Morton and Jim Francis (eds), A Europe of Neighbours? Religious Social Thought and the Reshaping of a Pluralist Europe (The University of Edinburgh, 1999) 149–172, 167.
164Collins, ‘European Private Law and the Cultural Identity of States’ (n 161) 358–359; it is not clear that what is for Europe (predominantly, the market) can necessarily be disentangled from what is for the local – it cannot be said that the market is for the European while the social is for the local, nor can it be said that culture can be concerned only with the non-economic; this is too simplistic.
165Patterson and others (n 28) 1.
169As is clear also from the jurisprudence of the CJEU, including C-8/74 Dassonville  ECR 837.
170This discussion is much too broad to enter into here but for a more detailed discussion, see Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz and Yane Svetiev (eds), A Self-Sufficient European Private Law: A Viable Concept? EUI Working Paper 2012/26, and therein, Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, ‘A Self-Sufficient European Private Law: A Viable Concept?’, 1–21, and especially 10, and Jan Smits, ‘Self-Sufficiency of European (Regulatory) Private Law: A Discussion Paper’, 77–82 and especially 77.
171As has been set out above, Savigny, while highlighting the significance of private law, being distinguished from the state and thus from public law, private law was still necessarily tied to society, in terms of the Volksgeist, or nation.
172Nancy Fraser, Qu’est-ce que la justice sociale? (E. Ferrarese trans., La Découverte 2005).
173Study Group, ‘Social Justice’ (n 18).
174Hugh Collins, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Transnational Private Law’ (2012) 8 ERCL 311, 312.
175Ruth Sefton-Green, ‘Social Justice and European Identity in European Contract Law’ (2006) ERCL 275, 285.
177Neil MacCormick, Constructing Legal Systems: ‘European Union’ in Legal Theory (Springer 1997); Weiler (n 155).
178William Wallace, ‘Less Than a Federation. More Than a Regime: The Community as a Political System’ in Helen Wallace and William Wallace (eds), Policy-Making in the European Community (OUP 1983), 403–436.
180Hanne Peterson and others (eds), Paradoxes of European Legal Integration (Ashgate 2008) 4, making reference to four paradoxes of European integration namely, constitutionalisation and democratisation, institution-building and market-making, language as a source of legal understanding and misunderstanding and exceptionalism and normalisation.
181In respect of the significance of boundaries, reference can be made to Lindahl, who conceives of a legal regime as one necessarily defined by its borders but in respect of which there is a ‘permeability’, such that what is excluded is necessarily also included; Hans Lindahl, ‘A-Legality – Postnationalism and the Question of Legal Boundaries’ (2010) 73 MLR 30, 55.
182This is not to say that private law was entirely closed previously; rather, it is to suggest that the reconceptualisations of analytical frameworks that derive from Europeanisation (and also transnationalisation) of private law call for the breaking down of barriers that have previously been (artificially) constructed and permeated in respect of the relationship with private law with, for example, public law, society and social values.
183Craig Scott, ‘‘Transnational Law’ as Proto-Concept: Three Conceptions’ (2009) GLJ 859, 870 and 873. Indeed, perhaps as ‘a methodological lens’ allowing for the analysis of legal institutions and legal development in a multi-level space, Peer Zumbansen, ‘Transnational Legal Pluralism’ (2010) 1 Transnational Legal Theory 141, 150.
The author would like to acknowledge and thank The Leverhulme Trust, which has provided funding for the postdoctoral position.

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