M-EPLI Research

Globalization has not only liberalized trade across borders, it has also led to increasing calls to consider the interests of a globalized society. Private law as the central area of the law that facilitates and regulates the conduct of private actors has not been spared from these claims. The most prominent challenges that private law is facing in this regard are the need to incorporate the claims for sustainable development and environmental protection, and to be oriented towards the objectives of global justice (including the protection of human rights). Regarding these challenges, M-EPLI researchers focus specifically on the impact of global policy frameworks on sustainability, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and international public law frameworks, such as international human rights law, on the various areas of private law.

One of the drastic societal transformations of the past decade has been the speed with which new technologies have been developed, adopted and relied upon. Digitalization encompasses a variety of phenomena that range from the increase of a new type of business enterprises (i.e. the platform economy), revolution in the use of technologies for the formation and enforcement of private law relations (i.e. software agents, smart contracts, blockchain, online dispute resolution) to the prominence of data protection questions and their overlap with core private law concepts. M-EPLI’s research on digitalization aims to conduct interdisciplinary research on such topics with a view to better understanding of the character of these new technological developments and discussing possible impacts on the field of private law, and the desirability of private law responses to these impacts. In this respect, M-EPLI researchers are discussing the possible role of the law in facilitating and regulating these new technologies.

One of the internal transformations within private law thinking that M-EPLI has put the focus on has been the role of different private and public actors in the process of private law-making and law enforcement. This research line continues to exist in the new programme with a specific focus on how private actors, such as consumers, businesses and private organisations, are involved in regulation and law-making and what their role as “private law actors” implies for our conception of the legitimacy of private law.

Focusing on these various challenges and the resulting transformation of private law requires not only a deep substantive analysis of these challenges and the internal transformation of private law, but also brings the challenge of developing appropriate research methods to investigate these phenomena. New research methods are needed in the field of European private law to describe and understand the societal challenges and the internal reactions in private law as well as to develop sound normative conclusions on how private law should react. M-EPLI researchers are particularly interested in developing and testing such new ways of analysing European private law. In this research line, two core pillars exist: A focus on new empirical methods (including methods based on data science) for describing private law and how it is influenced by new societal phenomena and the search for normative methods that allow drawing theoretically robust conclusions as to the directions that private law needs to take.