Samuli Hurri – författare

First published in 1999, this book focuses on the new role of private law in late modernity. It analyses the pressures for changes in this area of law due to the present processes of privatisation and marketisation. The perspective is welfarist: in what ways and to what extent can the welfare state expectations of the citizens be defended through private law mechanisms when state-offered security is diminishing? Which alternatives are available when developing private law? The questions are discussed against the background of theories concerning important features of late modern society, for example consumerism, risk, information, globalisation and fragmentation. Several fields of private law are analysed, such as private law theory, tort and liability law, contract law and credit law as well as access to justice issues. The approach is comparative, including analyses of both common law and continental law.

First published in 1999, this book focuses on the new role of private law in late modernity. It analyses the pressures for changes in this area of law due to the present processes of privatisation and marketisation. The perspective is welfarist: in what ways and to what extent can the welfare state expectations of the citizens be defended through private law mechanisms when state-offered security is diminishing? Which alternatives are available when developing private law? The questions are discussed against the background of theories concerning important features of late modern society, for example consumerism, risk, information, globalisation and fragmentation. Several fields of private law are analysed, such as private law theory, tort and liability law, contract law and credit law as well as access to justice issues. The approach is comparative, including analyses of both common law and continental law.

This book examines the birth of the European individual as a juridical problem, focusing on legal case dossiers from the European Court of Justice as an electrifying laboratory for the study of law and society. Foucault’s story of the modern subject constitutes the book’s main theoretical inspiration, as it considers the encounter between legal and other practices within a more general field of juridical power: a network of active relations, between different social spheres.

Through the analysis of delinquent individuals – each expelled from one of the Member States – the raw material for constructing the idea of the European individual is uncovered. The European individual, it is argued, emerged out of the intersection of regimes of law, security and economy, and its practices of knowledge-power.

Birth of the European Individual: Law, Security, Economy will be of interest to those studying the individual in law, as well as anyone considering the relationships between power and the individual.