Confronting the Historical and Epistemo logical Obstacles to Harmonisation Geoffrey Samuel A recent article in Le Monde made the point that whatever the difficulties facing those charged with realising monetary union in Europe they are nothing compared to the difficulties concerning the harmonisation of electric plugs.* In the face of such a revelation jurists should perhaps be modest when it comes to the question of harmonisation with respect to their own subject. Can they ever match the problems facing those who wish to harmonise currency or electric plugs? Indeed, if the railway authorities of France and England can produce a locomotive capable of functioning not only on the TGVlines of SNCF and on (what used to be) the British Railways lines north of London, but also on the tracks of the old London &South Western Railway, there is no excuse for lawyers not to come up with their own version of Eurostar, even if it does suffer, like the eurotrain, from the odd malfunction. Law, as the Roman jurists remarked, was made for man and if their own product could serve so many different economies and ideologies, it is unlikely that modern jurists in Europe cannot fashion some kind of a legal system to serve the whole of Europe. It should be stressed at the outset, then, that this paper, in emphasising the historical and epistemological obstacles in the path of a new ius commune^ must not be taken to be overexaggerating the tasks facing the European jurist. No doubt legal harmonisation will be easier than electrical harmonisation; but this is sc)mething upon which the jurist can reflect when purchasing an adapter plug, the legal rules governing which, whatever end of the tunnel it is purchased, go back to Pothier, if not Roman law itself. Introductory remark Whether a newius commune is a desirable project is of course a different question - and one that raises serious issues that are only now being debated with some sophistication.- But this question is for another paper.^ What this paper ' Lc Monde 18 mai 1995, p. 25. - Sec c.g., T. Weir, Die Sprachen des europaischen Rechts [3/1995] ZEuP 368; P. Legrand, Comparatists-at-Laie and the Contrarian Challenge (Inaugural Lecture, Tilburg Univer.sity, 1995); P. Legrand, European Legal Systems are not Converging (1996) 45 ICLQ 52; Against a European Civil Code (1977) 60 Modern Lau- Review44. See P. Legrand, European Legal Systems, supra. And see also. Comparative Legal Studies and Commitment to Theory (1995) 58 MLR262.
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