the europeanization of legal cultures and principles, but also in civil law systematization and terminology. At the same time, the similarities in legal scholarship and especially in legal practice are difficult to assess: new codes are often presented descriptively, without reference to fundamental ideas or general doctrines. This, then, is one story of a ‘Europeanizing’ private law, based on national developments. The other, at the moment a highly topical one, stems from influences from European and global institutions and international conflict resolution. In fact, it only marginally concerns the traditional core of private law on contract relations and issues of liability, though still many crucial sectors of economic activity. From there it might also have a bearing on ways to regulate or apply traditional private law, too. Hence, we can look at consumer law and see it is harmonized within theEU(and has an impact outside theEU). The other important sector with new, increasingly detailed regulation is the financial sector, and the third is the telecommunication sector.8 Both these sectors are interesting also because of the central role of global and/ or privatized regulation (self-regulation, standards and so on). Thus, there are many actors in and developments towards harmonization: towards Europeanization and globalization of law. Finally, I would like to touch briefly on current trends in legal scholarship. At many law faculties, tensions between professional teaching and academic research, and between national orientation and an international approach are under discussion. One reason for debate is the increasing dominance of the English language – even in law. For instance, in Finland around 30 doctoral theses a year are defended in law; over two-thirds of these are written in English. More generally, English is becoming the most ‘respected’ language of publication within Nordic academia. In Finland, the trend is furthered by the evaluation culture, with 8 For the financial sector, for example, see Stefan Grundmann & Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz (eds.), The European Banking Union and Constitution: Beacon for Advanced Integration or DeathKnell for Democracy? (Oxford: Hart, 2019). 283 We need legal history
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=