Mattei, Ugo --- "The Nile Perch in European Private Law" [2011] ELECD 673; in Micklitz, Hans-W. (ed), "The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law

Editor(s): Micklitz, Hans-W.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802604

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: The Nile Perch in European Private Law

Author(s): Mattei, Ugo

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

8. The Nile Perch in European private
law
Ugo Mattei1
Like the Nile Perch in Lake Victoria, European private law (EPL)2 has enor-
mously expanded its might and reach in the last 20 years. Incrementally trans-
formed into a well-funded academic industry, it has been the most important
agency of penetration in Europe of a Western-centric legal ideology embedded
in neo-liberal economic models3. This transformation has been in counter-
tendency to the evolution of the first part of the twentieth century, when
cultural and political forces were capable of moving private law ideology away
from the bourgeois liberal values based on individualism, selfishness and
exclusion. In fact, inclusiveness into a variety of welfare programs and an
expanded role of public law characterized the political economy of the most
advanced European legal environments in the first 80 years of the twentieth
century4. However this highly advanced political economy which was capable
of constructing an ambitious welfare state, was grounded in an obsolete legal
consciousness. State-centrism, legal formalism, lack of comparative dialogue
and disconnection of law from other social sciences provided the conservative
form of a progressive substance of the law before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
To the contrary, the transformation of private law in Europe determined by
the EPL industry can be considered progressive in its forms5 (anti-positivist,


1 I wish to thank Emanuele Ariano and Marco De Morpurgo, both MS candi-
dates at IUC, for their help in researching and editing this ...