Civil Law as a Common Heritage, Challenges for Law and Economics and for Comparative Law

This chapter reproduces the lecture delivered at the conference of the Italian Law and Economics Association in Brescia in December 2023. The programme itself demonstrates how vibrant and fruitful our discipline remains in Italy—perhaps the only Western country where an institutional approach to economics has deep roots and has never faded. I have often felt that Italian scholars have easier access to the study of institutions than their German counterparts. In the nineteenth century, the latter were influenced by the historical school, which rightly emphasised the role of institutions but was often insufficiently analytical to produce significant general hypotheses or theorems. Subsequently, German economists adopted neoclassical economics, which, while analytical, lacked a comprehensive understanding of institutions. I am also mindful that Italy is both the birthplace and ancestral home of civil law as we know it. In the late medieval period, university scholars in Italy not only revived Roman law but also developed new legal concepts and frameworks. They conceptualised law as a system—a legal order—and placed particular emphasis on the individual. Jim Gordley has recently described this phenomenon as a big bang, while Harold Berman referred to it as a legal revolution. The work of the eminent academic figures of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had a formative influence on the development of law across much of Western (Latin) Europe for centuries to come. The original lecture, and thus this chapter, offers an opportunity to share reflections on Western European civil law with distinguished Italian scholars. This chapter explores that legacy, viewing it both as an inspiration and a challenge.