Introduction to private law

The book strives to provide a historical, comparative, and multidisciplinary introduction to the study of private law. Against the backdrop of the predominant position enjoyed by legal positivism, private law is thus understood as a complex social phenomenon, which intercats with human culture as a whole. The national jurisdictions belonging to the Western legal tradition are mainly depicted, as well as the supranational trends that point towards a global law. Particularly, the rise of a European law is accounted for not only within the framework of the Union's legislature, but also through the development of a rediscovered ius commune that emerges from comparative studies conducted by scholars and from the creative attitude of the courts. A special attention is paid to the sources of uniform law and to the development of soft law as a means of integration of legal systems. Traditional doctrines of juridical facts and duties are finally reinterpreted as devices designed to construct a jurisprudence that extends beyond national borders.