It is no surprise that today’s private law is fragmented as a result of increasing Europeanisation. Next to age-old national legislation and case law, private law today is increasingly shaped by European and supranational sources and by private regulation. As the various producers of norms have their own aims and policies to pursue, private law is rapidly becoming a mixture of differently oriented rules and principles. This development can be described as one from coherence to fragmentation. But while fragmentation is a well-known phenomenon in core areas of private law such as the law of contract, property and tort, it is much less studied in other fields. This was the main reason why one of the research groups of the Centre of Excellence in the Foundations of European Law and Polity at the University of Helsinki decided to test the fragmentation hypothesis for not only contract and property law, but also for competition law, insurance law, marketing law, private international law and the law of intellectual property. The book that is the result of this research was just published by Sellier European Law Publishers. All authors, specialists in their respective fields, were asked to consider a number of common questions. These include how the concept of coherence is perceived in their field, what are the manifestations of fragmentation and how the adverse effects of this fragmentation should in their view be remedied. This leads to a number of interesting insights that cut across the specific legal fields.

More information about the book, that I edited together with my Helsinki colleague Pia Letto-Vanamo, can be found here.