The continuing and accelerating process of European integration impacts on European legal education, or ought to have its impact on our ideas about legal education in Europe. Although legal education in Europe is mainly national and usually conducted in the national language, there are initiatives that seek to break through the national barriers and move towards a truly European legal education. The Maastricht European Law School, which focuses on European Union law, international law and comparative law, fully taught in English, is one of these initiatives. In this edited volume we have endeavoured to reflect upon European Legal education in the light of that program, which has been on offer for a couple of years now and which attracts a great deal of students from all over Europe and the world as well, and to offer to interested readers ways forward as well as obstacles and points to ponder. This books pays attention to the developments in European law and the effects these have on legal education in general as well as in other fields. Drawing from their own experiences, the authors describe the current state of law, offer perspectives on future developments and explain how they translate these developments in the law school curriculum. All the contributions in this book have in common that each author seeks to better prepare students for a future in a more integrated Europe. It is our purpose to generate a European debate about the subject and to move the European discussion forward to concrete steps to effectively establish European legal education for new generations of lawyers that will work in an increasingly Europeanised legal domain.

As the European Union (EU) matures, there is an increasing debate, partly fuelled by fierce national criticism offered by Eurosceptic politicians, partly initiated by the EU institutions themselves, on the way in which the EU has developed and what the EU must look like in the future. This debate includes a discussion on one of the core aspects of European integration: at which level should the rules be set and who decides where the authority to do so should lie? Private law has an important role to play in this discussion. Many private law rules touch on the core of the internal market as they serve to foster trade or to offer protection to market participants, such as consumers.In 2011, the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI) was founded. M-EPLI researchers combine European Private Law scholarship in the fields of contract, property, commercial and procedural law as well as legal theory. In this book M-EPLI fellows present perspectives on the allocation of competences in European Private Law. This includes both general perspectives and criteria on the basis of which to decide who does what in European Private Law, but also specific perspectives relating to the various fields M-EPLI's researchers cover. All contributions share a common approach in which each author or team of authors addresses the same two questions: (i) What are the criteria to decide upon the ideal design of their field of law for the EU?; (ii) Who should set the rules: what is in the author(s) view the optimal mix of national and European producers of legal norms?

In order to develop a framework that can form a basis for the development of a European property law, this book provides a comparative analysis of property law from the perspective of four European legal systems and European law, focusing on the numerus clausus principle. The book offers theoretical insights on how substantive property law, European law, and, to a certain extent, private international law intersect. The principle of numerus clausus, one of the fundamental principles of property law, is adhered to by most legal systems. In this book, an analysis of the property law systems of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and England is provided. A description is given of the content of available property rights in each of these systems, followed by an examination as to whether these rights form a closed system and whether private parties are given freedom to shape property rights, or even create new types of rights. In the last decades, property law has come under pressure to allow more party autonomy. In other words, property law has become more and more subject to pressure from contract law. Private parties attempt to draft their contracts in such a way that their contractual arrangements are given property effect. Sometimes they also attempt to make use of a property right in a way that was not foreseen by legislature or courts. As a result, rights have come into existence that are intermediary between the law of contract and the law of property. Moreover, the systems of property law are also subject to a growing influence from European legislation. The development of the internal market in the European Union increasingly forces Member States to answer the question whether and, if the answer is affirmative, in what way property rights created in another Member State should be recognized. Substantive property law intersects here. Until now, national legal systems generally resist this influence of European law and use the principle of numerous clausus as a justification. It is to be questioned whether the numerus clauses principle can still act as a guardian against the influence of foreign and European law.

This book is exceptional in the sense that it provides an introduction to law in general rather than the law of one specific jurisdiction, and it presents a unique way of looking at legal education. It is crucial for lawyers to be aware of the different ways in which societal problems can be solved and to be able to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different legal solutions. In this respect, being a lawyer involves being able to reason like a lawyer, even more than having detailed knowledge of particular sets of rules. Introduction to Law reflects this view by focusing on the functions of rules and on ways of arguing the relative qualities of alternative legal solutions. Where 'positive' law is discussed, the emphasis is on the legal questions that must be addressed by a field of law and on the different solutions which have been adopted by, for instance, the common law and civil law tradition. The law of specific jurisdictions is discussed to illustrate possible answers to questions such as when the existence of a valid contract is assumed.

This casebook presents a deep comparative analysis of property law systems in Europe (i.e. the law of immovables, movables, and claims), offering signposts and stepping stones for the reader wishing to explore this fascinating area. The subject matter is explained with careful attention given to its history, foundations, thought-patterns, underlying principles, and basic concepts. The casebook focuses on uncovering differences and similarities between Europe's major legal systems - French, German, Dutch, and English law are examined, while Austrian and Belgian law are also touched upon. The book combines excerpts from primary source materials (case law and legislation) and from doctrine and soft law. In doing so, it presents a faithful picture of the systems concerned. Separate chapters deal with the various types of property rights, their creation, transfer, and destruction, along with security rights (such as mortgages, pledges, retention of title), as well as with harmonizing and unifying efforts at the EU and global level. Through the functional approach taken by the Ius Commune Casebooks series, this volume clearly demonstrates that traditional comparative insights no longer hold. The law of property used to be regarded as a product of historical developments and political ideology, which were considered to be almost set in stone and assumed to render any substantial form of harmonization or approximation very unlikely. Even experienced comparative lawyers considered the divide between common law and civil law to be so deep that no common ground (so it was thought) could be found. However, economic integration - in particular, integration of financial markets and freedom of establishment - has led to the integration of particular areas of property law, such as mortgage law and enforceable security instruments (e.g. retention of title). This pressure towards integration has led comparative lawyers to refocus their interest from contract, tort, and unjustified enrichment to property law and to delve beneath its surface. This book reveals that today's property law systems are closer to one another than previously assumed, that common ground can be found, and that differences can be analyzed in a new light to enable comparison and further the development of property law in Europe. (Series: Ius Commune Casebooks for the Common Law of Europe)