Security interests: a secure start for the development of European property law

In this paper it is examined if unification or even harmonisation of the law on security rights, both on movables, immovables and claims, is at all possible without (1) thorough analysis of the property law traditions in Europe, (2) study of the existing, albeit limited, acquis communautaire in the area of property law and (3) an overall framework of European property law, in other words: a common frame of reference, as is now being developed with regard to particularly contract law. In my Van Gerven lecture "European and national property law: Osmosis or growing antagonism?" (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=995979) I answered question (1) already negatively. As to the acquis communautaire in the area of property law some research has been done and is now being published. It is on question (3) that I focus: the need to develop an overall framework of European property law and what the constituent elements of such a framework should be. Several policy choices are being discussed: Should more freedom of contract in the law of property be allowed? Is there a need for civil law systems to allow more flexibility with regard to their unitary concept of ownership? Should protection of ownership or protection of commerce have priority

The EU Succession Certificate:From standardization to digitalization

The European Certificate of Succession is an obligatory form that may be used in cross-border succession cases. The form standardizes the information to be provided to interested parties. Could this standardization be further developed through digitalization, as standardization and digitalization are as closely connected as standardization and the use of forms? Could an e-copy of the certificate, issued by a smart contract running on a blockchain, be stored in the e-wallet which every European citizen might have in the near future, allowing the digital presentation of the copy to, for example, a bank or a land registry, securing Self-Sovereign Identity

Community dynamics in an online law journal

Online communities are continuously evolving socio-technical systems. To provide them with better change management support, a systematic analysis of the norms that govern their evolution is required. In this paper, we present an approach that was used to analyze the community dynamics in an online law journal. Electronic journals in the legal domain are essential instruments in the validation and distribution of new legal knowledge. To ensure the high quality of these e-journals, the dynamics of the online communities in which the various journal stakeholders interact need to be well understood. We outline the evolution of one of the first successful legal e-journals: the Electronic Journal of Comparative Law. We describe the change management lessons learnt in practice and use these to illustrate our diagnostic approach for self-governance analysis in virtual communities.