This book offers a ground-breaking read, both
comparative and historical, of the structure and
transformation of private law in continental Europe.
It reconstructs a hermeneutical praxis that is (it is argued) at the core of private law: the balancing of conflicting interests and normative considerations in 3 key arguments: 'balancing' in private law is not merely an analytical process but instead a form of legal argument; in order to truly understand private law, a bottom-up historical analysis must be adopted and 'balancing' has always been a comparative process within civil law systems and across the civil-common law divide.
