Copyright
Laura Burgers; Marija Bartl; Chantal Mak;Published On
2025-06-05Page Range
pp. 3–19Language
- English
Print Length
17 pages
1. The Evolving Concept of Private Law in Europe
- Laura Burgers (author)
- Marija Bartl (author)
- Chantal Mak (author)
This introduction aims to set out some of the basic concepts of European private law, while providing a common ground for the rest of the handbook Uncovering European Private Law. The introduction starts by defining some key terms, such as private law, private autonomy, or freedom of contract, and then proceeds to unpack important processes and developments that have marked the constitution of private law in Europe, including materialization and constitutionalization of private law, as well as the europeanization and instrumentalization of private law through positive and negative integration. Building on the understanding of these terms and processes, we propose to
understand European private law not only as a multi-level legal field but also a way of looking at private law that is necessarily transdisciplinary, comparative and contextual.
Contributors
Laura Burgers
(author)Dr. Laura Burgers works as an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam Law School and
ACT. Her research is situated at the intersection of sustainability issues, private law,
fundamental rights, and legal theory. Her interests include climate litigation, rights of
future generations and rights of nature. She teaches in the University of Amsterdam’s
(UvA) private law programmes, supervises an Environmental Justice Clinic and
coordinates a five-hundred-student bachelor course on law and sustainability. She
works often with societal partners including the artistic-philosophical collective
Embassy of the North Sea. She is one of the national experts in the United Nations
(UN) program Harmony with Nature. See https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/b/u/
l.e.burgers/l.e.burgers.html
Marija Bartl
(author)Prof. Dr. Marija Bartl is Professor of Transnational Private Law at the Amsterdam
Law School and the Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law
(ACT). She is a (co)president of European Law Unbound-Society and the editor of
European Law Open. She has taught several courses, including ‘European Contract Law’,
‘Private Law in European and International Perspective’, ‘Law as a Change-Maker’, and
‘Making Markets Beyond the State’. Bartl has held appointments as a Fernand Braudel
Fellow at the European University Institute, a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies
in Nantes, Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Law School, Boston University and the Max
Planck Institute for Comparative Law in Hamburg. She has recently published an open
access monograph Reimagining prosperity: Toward a New Imaginary of Law and Political
Economy in the EU (CUP, 2024). Currently, Bartl is working on her ERC-funded project
‘Law as a Vehicle for Social Change: Mainstreaming Non-Extractive Economic Practices
(N-EXTLAW)’, exploring how private law may help mainstream ‘non-extractive
economic practices’. See https://www.uva.nl/profiel/b/a/m.bartl/m.bartl.html
Chantal Mak
(author)Prof. Dr. Chantal Mak is Professor of Private Law, specialising in fundamental
rights and private law, at the Amsterdam Law School and ACT. She is a teacher and
former programme director of the LL.M. in transnational and European Private Law
at the Amsterdam Law School. Her research focuses on the legal-theoretical and
constitutional legal framework for private law in Europe, with a special interest for the
role of the judiciary in European Private Law. See https://www.uva.nl/profiel/m/a/c.
mak/c.mak.html