Volume 13, Number 1, was published online in September 2020. Articles explore and reconcile the present, the past, and the future.
The lead article article is a masterful presentation of the use of comparative law by the European Court of Justice, expanding the 42nd Tucker Lecture given by Michele Graziadei, Professor at the University of Turin (Italy), on September 5, 2019.
The second article sheds new light on the definitions found in the Digest of 1808 and the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825: Seth Brostoff, Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Librarian at LSU, explores the origins of these definitions in the French Encyclopédie universelle and the legal encyclopedias that derived from it. These definitions do not appear in the French Napoleonic Code of 1804 but were needed in Louisiana, as codification was meant not only to make the law accessible but also to educate attorneys and judges trained in the common law. This makes codification in Louisiana even more French than Rodolfo Batiza would have thought, and Robert Pascal, who may now converse with Diderot and d’Alembert in an encyclopedic paradise, is no longer here to find this truth disturbing. An overdue tribute to Robert A. Pascal (1915-2018) is forthcoming in Number 2.
Emiliano Marchisio, Professor at the University of Benevento (Italy), opens a promising and futuristic conversation on the need to move liability for medical malpractice out of traditional tort and contract precincts, to limit the negative impact of defensive medicine and favor the breakthrough of artificial intelligence.
Colloquium Papers
In the spring 2020, as most of the world was in lockdown mode due to the sanitary crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Journal of Civil Law Studies decided to hold a colloquium online to discuss The Opportunities of Distance Teaching. Agustín Parise, Associate Editor-in-Chief, led the initiative and coordinated the event from Maastricht University (the Netherlands), in liaison with Olivier Moréteau, Editor-in-Chief, who was at the time on sabbatical in Lyon (France). Five colleagues were invited to join to speak at the colloquium, so that Africa, North and South America, Asia, and Europe would be represented. Accordingly, Xiangshun Ding (Renmin University, China), Nadia Nedzel (Southern University Law Center, USA), Christa Rautenbach (North-West University, South Africa), Michel Séjean (University of Southern Brittany, France), and Fernando Toller (Austral University, Argentina), each shared their own perspectives on the current scenario that legal education is facing. Each of them produced short note that we are proud to publish.
Click here to access the Journal of Civil Law Studies
