Bram Akkermans - Böcker

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.

This book contains selected contributions from the third Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF) and the YPLF Masterclass 2012. It offers new perspectives on property theory, constitutional property law, and private law-property law. Under these headings, young and renowned property law scholars present their current research and offer an exciting look into the challenges property law faces in the 21st century. In November 2012 the YPLF met in Stellenbosch, South Africa for the Forum's third edition. It is an informal network of young property law researchers that seeks to bring together property law researchers from around the world and to enable them to discuss their work with each other and with more experienced researchers. On this occasion a special Master Class was held after the YPLF in which some of the world's leading property law scholars presented their research. The YPLF continues to form a network for property law researchers around the word, leading to more conferences and publications.

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?

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary.Bringing together a diverse array of property law specialists, this timely Research Agenda explores the theoretical and doctrinal dimensions of the main subareas of property law. It examines the current tensions between the protection of existing property interests and the need to tackle societal challenges, such as digitalisation, the creation of energy communities, and the climate crisis.Multidisciplinary in scope, A Research Agenda for Property Law analyses various subfields including property theory and constitutional property law, presenting key insights into the role of property law in society. Contributing authors critically assess the internal and external challenges currently facing property law, such as the development of disruptive technologies, globalisation and the energy transition, and highlight the pressing need to accommodate them. Ultimately, it offers a way forward for future research in the coming decade to address these issues.This prescient Research Agenda is a fundamental resource for scholars and students of commercial law and property law. Its practical implications and recommendations for future research will also be beneficial to legal practitioners and policymakers at the local, national and international level.

This casebook presents a deep comparative analysis of property law systems in Europe (ie 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, with security rights (such as mortgages, pledges, retention of title) as well as with harmonising and unifying efforts at the EU and global level. Through the functional approach taken by the Ius Commune Casebooks 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 harmonisation 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 (eg 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 delve beneath its surface.This book reveals that today property law systems are closer to one another than previously assumed, that common ground can be found and that differences can be analysed in a new light to enable comparison and further the development of property law in Europe.

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.

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.