Concept and Aims

The Ius Commune Casebook Project aims to produce a collection of casebooks, covering each of the main fields of law.

The casebooks comprise cases and other materials (legislative materials, international materials, draft model principles, restatements and excerpts from books or articles, as appropriate). Those materials relate, as much as possible, to similar problems or factual situations under the various legal systems under study. The materials will be accompanied by short introductory and explanatory notes to situate them in context. At the end of each section, a comparative overview ties together the materials included under that section, with emphasis, where possible, on existing or emerging general principles in the national and supranational legal systems of Europe.

The functional method, based on cases and concrete problems, has proven very useful and effective in introducing students and scholars to any given field of law. The Ius Commune Casebooks present the additional advantage that academics and students from across Europe (including the new EU members from Central Europe) and beyond can study and discuss the same leading cases and materials. With time, a fertile ground will be created, upon which the various legal systems can meaningfully grow together in any chosen fashion. In the long run, this may prove to be the most valuable contribution of the casebooks towards the emergence of a common law of Europe.

The Ius Commune Casebooks on Tort Law and Contract Law have already been used for teaching purposes in a number of universities in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and even in Australia and Japan.

The Ius Commune Casebooks are suitable not only for educational but also for research and reference purposes. The casebooks already also proved useful for members of the judiciary. The Casebook on Tort Law has for instance been cited several times by the House of Lords, inter alia in McFarlane v. Tayside Health Board and Fairchild v. Glenhaven). The casebooks are also hoped to serve as a source of inspiration for attorneys at law, civil servants or in-house legal counsellors who wish to study how other national legal systems or supranational systems respond to problems with which they find themselves confronted.

It is hoped that the use of the casebooks will spread further throughout Europe and worldwide, so that the series can become a point of reference for academics, practitioners, judges, officials and students alike.

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