Interpretation of Commercial Contracts in European Private Law.

bookCoherent privaatrech

Confronting the conjecture of cultural incommensurability in comparative law

This article presents a case against the thesis of cultural incommensurability in contemporary comparative law, in particular the one advocated by comparative law theorist Pierre Legrand, by looking to the argument of language philosopher Donald Davidson against the notion of 'conceptual schemes'. The article differentiates incommensurability from incomparability, demonstrating that while a lack of identity between legal cultures may lead to incomparability, it can never result in incommensurability. The primary argument entails that proving incomparability is a testament to, rather than a negation of commensurability, for the reason that even the most radical differences between legal cultures are unimaginable without a common measure, as Davidson elucidated

The role of legal translation in legal harmonization

Papers gepresenteerd op de conferentie, 'The Role of Legal Translation in Legal Harmonization', georganiseerd in Amsterdam op 21 januari 2011, door The Amsterdam Circle for Law & Language (ACLL) en the Centre for the Study of European Contract Law (CSECL)

‘Maximov’ revisited: Naar een ruimere bevoegdheid van de rechter om een vernietigd buitenlands arbitraal vonnis alsnog van verlof tot tenuitvoerlegging te voorzien

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The EU policy on institutional multilingualism: between policy and practicality

This article brings to light several inconsistencies within the narrative of the EU policy on institutional multilingualism. The EU has invoked fundamental EU principles of democracy, equality and transparent government, to publically bolster the need for its institutions to communicate and operate in the languages of its citizens. However, these principles do not allow for the pragmatic and budgetary arguments that the EU uses to justify the in reality limited number of official and de facto working languages of its institutions. The article argues that this disagreement could be resolved if the narrative of the EU's language policy would include the objective that all European citizens master any the languages that the EU institutions use. In that light, the article recommends that further research is done into the question whether the EU should accept or even encourage the spontaneous development of English as a de facto pan-European lingua franca