I. INTRODUCTION
At lunchtime today, Alexis Downe, lecturer in Toulouse University 1 Capitole and visiting lecturer here in Trinity, gave a staff seminar on “The reform of French Contract Law: a brief overview”. The fundamentals of French private law in general, and of the Law of Contract in particular, are largely unchanged in the Code civil (first edition cover pictured left) since it was adopted in 1804. Nevertheless, there have been significant social changes, from the nineteenth century’s industrial revolution, to the twentieth century’s two world wars, to the twenty-first century’s information age. In many ways, the current process of reform is intended to allow French contract law to catch up with these and other developments. In this post, I provide some background to the current process of reform of French contract law, and then discuss Alexis’s paper.

II. BACKGROUND
Earlier this year, I wrote a post on this blog about French reform of Contract Law in comparative context, constructed around Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson‘s article on “The French Contract Law Reform in a European Context” (2014) ELTE Law Journal 59. To the story told in that post should be added the English translation (pdf) (by John Cartwright and Simon Whittaker) of the Catala Avant-projet (pdf) and academic discussions of those drafts in England and France.…

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I recently came across a special issue of the ELTE Law Journal to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Hungary’s accession to the EU. The journal is published by the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences in Hungary’s oldest university, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest, and one article in the issue particularly caught my eye (with added links):

Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson “The French Contract Law Reform in a European Context” (2014) ELTE Law Journal 59

I Introductory Remarks on the Development of the Law in Europe
… The civil and commercial law of each Member State is built upon three pillars, the national legal systems, EU law and the ECHR. While our national experiences influence one another, the law of the EU is built upon these reciprocal influences. In turn, our national legal systems are influenced by EU law. …

As European scholars, our role is primarily to train students to think comparatively, in order to build a common legal culture all over Europe … As European lawyers in the 21st century, our mission goes beyond comparative teaching. … Legal scholarship has played its role as a guide to the European legislator. … The same phenomenon may be observed in those of our countries where the recodification of important parts of the law is envisaged.

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