vides rule-by-rule commentaries on the foundations and the modern manifestations of European contract law;49 and it suggests, for every issue, a synthesis based on all the available legal material. The project is driven by the belief that a re-Europeanization of private law requires above all a re-Europeanization of legal scholarship and legal training. A common European reference text would appear to be an ideal focus for a European legal scholarship and for a European legal training. This may be one of the central lessons from the oldius commune for the new European legal culture.50 Apart from that, it is remarkable that most national contract laws in Europe have undergone very interesting developments in recent times, usually pointing towards an organic convergence, and with some of the international reference texts providing a source of information about the point of convergence. The reform of the German law of obligations in 2002 may be mentioned in this context, and similarly the French reform of 2016, or the more liberal approach adopted towards contractual penalties by the English Supreme Court.51 The other project relates to an area of private law alluded to the first scenario: the law of succession. It has played a central role in the history of European private law. Eleven out of the forty-five books in Justinian’s Digest devoted to private law, and several titles in the other books, deal with the law of succession. For mediaeval and early modern law it may 49 It thus does not replicate the textbook by Hein Kötz, European Contract Law(2nd edn, Oxford:OUP, 2017). 50 Reinhard Zimmermann, ‘Ius Commune and the Principles of European Contract Law: Contemporary Renewal of an Old Idea’, in Hector MacQueen & Reinhard Zimmermann (eds.), European Contract Law: Scots and South African Perspectives (Edinburgh: EUP, 2006) 1–42. 51 For the German reform, see Reinhard Zimmermann, The New German Law of Obligations: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Oxford:OUP, 2005); for theFrench reform, see François Ancel, Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson & Juliette Gest, Aux sources de la réforme du droit des contrats (Paris: Dalloz, 2017); for the English decision, Cavendish Square Holding BV v Talal El Makdessi and ParkingEye Limited v Beavis, [2015] UKSC67, see Reinhard Zimmermann, ‘Art 9:509’, [5], in Jansen & Zimmermann 2018. The law of succession understanding the law in a historical and comparative perspective 245
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