The Role of Comparative Law in European Private Law: A Janus-Face Enterprise?

The contribution analyses the evolution of European private law at the cross-road between national private laws and EU law, in order to highlight the tension in the use of comparative law as a legal engineering tool or as a yardstick for critical assessment. It then focuses on European private regulatory law, a form of law that cuts across traditional legal categories, methods and actors, and is related to phenomena of globalization and transnational law. It concludes with a short discussion of the challenges and opportunitiesthat this scenario opens up for comparative law.