"Commentaries on European Contract Laws" reach a Spanish-language audience

In the “Commentaries on European Contract Laws” published in 2018 and edited by Institute Director Reinhard Zimmermann and Nils Jansen, the editors and twenty additional contributing scholars took stock of the development of uniform European contract law to date and offered orientation for the future. Spanish-language press Ediciones Olejnik has now selected a Spanish translation of the volume’s chapter on contractual damages, which was written by Reinhard Zimmermann, as the first work in its newly launched series of publications on European private law.

The Ediciones Olejnik series “Biblioteca de derecho privado europeo” is dedicated to presenting works that hold particular significance for the advancement of scholarship in the area of European private law to an international Spanish-language readership. Through its selection of Reinhard Zimmermann’s contribution to the “Commentaries on European Contract Laws” on European law on contractual damages (“Particular Remedies for Non-Performance”), the press is launching this series with an unusual format of scholarly commentary on law. Unlike classic commentaries, which deal with national laws, the “Commentaries on European Contract Laws” reconstruct the textual layers of European contract laws, placing their formulations and evaluations in relation to one another and in comparative and historical context.

At Zimmermann’s suggestion, the book’s cover design features John Constable’s painting “The Hay Wain”. Constable, an early nineteenth-century English landscape painter, is considered a forerunner of the French Impressionists. Zimmermann sees Constable’s work as a symbol of how profoundly cultures are mutually shaped by reciprocal influences. This motif resonates through the book, inspiring readers to find a parallel to it in the prospects for the development of European contract law.