FRIDAY 25th November 2016, Prof. Katja Langenbucher (Sciences Po Ecole de Droit and Goethe-University’s House of Finance) & Brooke Adele Marshall (Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law)

Economic transplants as a common language? (Prof. Langenbucher)

Processes of “economization” have been observed and described by anthropologists, economists and sociologists (pars pro toto, see the work of Michel Callon). The presentation will focus on a related phenomenon in the world of legal research, law-making and adjudication which I address as “economic transplants“.

I will try, first, to capture reasons for the receptivity of lawyers and policymakers for “transplanting” findings based on economic methodology, both theoretical and empirical, into the law. Second, I shall ask if such “economic transplants“ live up to what they promise as far as legislative work is concerned. Third, economic transplants and the promises they hold are considered in the judicial context.

The presentation will rely on excerpts of a book forthcoming at CUP on “economic transplants“.

The CISG or the PICC as the governing law: normative ambiguities, dépeçage and the purportedly chosen law (Brooke Adele Marshall)

The Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts are “soft” private international law rules. They empower parties to choose either State law or soft “rules of law” to govern their contract, regardless of whether they litigate or arbitrate. This paper investigates the relationship between the Hague Principles and two sets of rules of law which parties may choose: the Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts (PICC) or the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). It makes three principal claims. First, the nature of the Hague Principles and their relationship with the PICC or the CISG gives rise to several normative ambiguities which need clarification. Second, the Hague Principles do not limit the parties’ ability to divide their contract at a choice of law level (horizontal dépeçage): parties can influence not only which rules of law govern the contract but also their content. This is undesirable as a matter of principle. It may also facilitate results which the PICC and the CISG do not intend. Third, the Hague Principles provide that the law which the parties purportedly chose determines whether the parties agreed on a choice of law. They also provide a mechanism which designates the law which the parties purportedly chose in standard contract terms. Applied to rules of law, the suitability of these provisions is questionable: alternatives should be explored.

When? Friday 25 November, 14:30 – 17:30

Where? at Sciences Po Ecole de Droit, 13 rue de l’université, 75007, Paris, Meeting Room (4th floor, room 410T)

FRIDAY 18th November 2016, Professor Pierre Legrand (Sciences Po Ecole de Droit)

The argument is that no account of (foreign) law — no matter how purportedly descriptive — can prove immune from autobiographical input on the part of the interpreter. It follows that no account of (foreign) law is in a position to claim neutrality, impartiality, objectivity, or truth. Any account of (foreign) law must therefore stand or fall by virtue of its persuasive strength, which depends in important ways on ascription of value to one’s interpretation/speculation on the part of one’s readership or audience.

• Discussant: Professor Mathias Siems (Professor at Durham University)

Full article by Prof. Pierre Legrand can be available at request to participants of the seminar who register in advance.

Contact: lucia.bizikova@sciencespo.fr 

Obs.: The seminar and the discussion will be held in English. However, it will be possible to address questions in other languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian and German.

When? Friday 18 November, 16:30 – 19:00

Where? at Sciences Po Law School, 13 rue de l’université, 75007, Paris, salle de réunion (4th floor)

WEDNESDAY 19th October 2016, Prof. Robert Wai (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University)

The turn to transnational law admirably directs analysis of contemporary society towards a realistic sense of the plural, complex normative terrains of transnational relations. This presentation will focus on what the turn to the transnational suggests with respect to equally real questions of power and coercion in transnational private relations. This question will be explored by connecting the transnational law turn of Philip Jessup to the earlier legal realist insights of Robert Hale through a focus on coercion and distribution in transnational private law. The goal is to relate the contemporary emphasis in transnational private law on party autonomy, notably in areas such as arbitration, to older and continuing concerns about “legal and non-legal coercion” in private relations.   Can a turn to transnational private ordering be framed in terms other than party autonomy? In particular, how can transnational private law recognize the role of Hale’s “supposedlly noncoercive state” in constituting various forms of transnational coercive power.

• Discussant: Horatia Muir Watt

When? Wednesday 19 October, 17:30 – 19:30

Where? at Sciences Po, 27 rue Saint Guillaume, 75007, Paris, room A24 (2nd floor)

FRIDAY 7th October 2016, Prof. Leone Niglia (University CIII of Madrid)

This seminar contributes to comparative scholarly analyses of ‘legal transplants’ and ‘legal change’. Drawing on a combination of legal history, comparative law and legal theory, the seminar introduces a method that is needed towards understanding the current globalisation of law and legal thought including comparing it with past globalisations. On the basis of this new method, the seminar essay sheds light on three unaccounted transformations in transnational law and legal thought in Europe over the last one hundred years that legal comparative thought has contributed to. These transformations need to be taken seriously towards gaining a deeper understanding of the relationships between law, state and post-national governance.

• Discussant: Veronica Corcodel

When? Friday 7 October, at 16:30

Where? at Sciences Po Law School, 13 rue de l’université, 75007, Paris, salle de réunion (4th floor)

FRIDAY 30th September 2016, Prof. Paddy Ireland (University of Bristol)

There has never been a shortage of instances of corporate irresponsibility. They do, however, seem to have increased in number in recent years. In this seminar, Prof. Ireland will trace the institutional sources of this problem to the way in which the corporate legal form has been constituted. In some contexts the large joint stock corporations which dominate so much of economic life are closely identified with their shareholders, while in others they are regarded as ‘completely separate’.

He will then explore the nature and historical origins of these schizophrenic ideas about the nature of the relationship between corporations and their shareholders, arguing that they underpin contemporary corporate irresponsibility. He suggests that they are attributable to the emergence in the nineteenth century of the perception of corporations as both separate legal persons and objects of property, and to the transformation of the joint stock company share into a Janus-faced, hybrid legal form which enables shareholders to retain some of the key proprietary privileges of ‘insiders’ (owner-members of companies) while they at the same time enjoy the liability- and responsibility-free privileges of ‘outsiders’ (creditors external to companies).

He will go on to suggest that, as commentators as diverse as Marx, Veblen, Hilferding, and Lippmann observed, the hybrid nature of shareholding could have taken corporate governance in very different directions and, historically, has done so, leading at times to highly ‘financialized’ shareholder-focused forms of governance and at other times to much more ‘socialized’ forms. He concludes by exploring the policy implications of the (re)financialized forms of governance that have emerged in recent years.

• Discussant: Professor Antoine Lyon-Caen

When? Friday 30 September, 14:30 – 17:30

Where? at Sciences Po Law School, 13 rue de l’université, 75007, Paris, salle de réunion (4th floor)