European Legal Development Conference

Cambridge, 19 December 2007

The European Legal Development Project aims to provide new insights into the factors that shape the development of legal systems in
Europe. It has been funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The topic of legal development is broad and, to make it manageable, we have planned a programme of work which has built up from a number of case studies and is now moving in this second phase towards a more general analysis and conclusions. Although we are concerned with legal development and many of those involved in the project are lawyers, any analysis will be deficient if it does not include and benefit from the insights of other disciplines.

We have chosen liability for fault 1850 to 2000 as our major area of study. Around 1850, there were many similarities in approaches to liability for fault across the legal systems of
Western Europe. But since then, there has been significant divergence. Our interest is first to chart the changes and then to seek the explanations for what happened.

Stage One of the Project

As a first stage, we have been working on six areas which illustrate the general theme of liability for fault:

  • Legal Doctrinal Writing (textbooks, etc)
  • Medical Liability
  • Product Liability 
  • Relations between Neighbours 
  • Technological Change (in particular sparks from railway engines, exploding boilers and asbestos)
  • Traffic and Railway accidents.

The research in each of these projects has involved scholars from a range of countries, in particular,
England and
Scotland,
Spain, the
Netherlands,
Germany,
France,
Sweden,
Austria and
Italy. Each working group draws on a mixture of comparative lawyers and legal historians.

These projects are each producing a book which will consist of an overview article together with a number of national papers (typically about 6). For the moment, these are on the project's website (see below), but will be moving into production for publication in 2008.

Stage Two

The purpose of the second stage groups is to offer reflections on the issues raised in the first stage. Such reflections will be based on both the results of the first stage papers and on the participants' more general knowledge of the fields in question. There are three groups:

  • Development of Ideas (convenors: Michael Lobban and Julia Moses)
  • Institutions and Professions (convenor: Paul Mitchell)
  • The Influence of the Economy and Insurance (convenors: Martin Daunton and Joshua Getzler)

Project Website

There is a special Project website, located at: http://eld.law.cam.ac.uk, however access to some of the contents is currently limited to Project members only.Coming soon, a public website to disseminate the Project's findings to a wider audience.

Enquiries to eld@law.cam.ac.uk.