Legal Responses to Globalization

Our world of open borders, growing migration, and cross-border movement of goods and services poses challenges for the law. One answer to these challenges is legal harmonization. Today, internationally uniform rules and principles can be found in many areas of private law. In the posthumously published work “Uniform Law”, Jürgen Basedow undertakes a comprehensive and cross-sectoral analysis of the general framework of uniform law.

The volume, written in English, traces an encyclopaedic arc across the topic. In an introductory chapter, the author presents a detailed conception of the term uniform law; thereafter he moves on to giving a full inventory of the relevant actors and uniform law prototypes. Three further chapters are devoted to practical challenges: the integration of international conventions into domestic law and their effects, conflict-of-law issues, and the various configurations of binding and non-binding international uniform law.

Jürgen Basedow was working on this project when, in 2023, he died unexpectedly. Though unfinished, the text was nevertheless in an advanced enough state to warrant publication. Jannis Gries, who had last worked for Basedow as a research assistant, prepared the manuscript for publication. On 29 November 2024, the book was presented to the public at a symposium held at the Institute in Jürgen Basedow's memory and honour.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Jürgen Basedow, LL.M. (Harvard), was a Director of the Institute from 1997 until 2017 (thereafter Director Emeritus) and a professor at the University of Hamburg. Prior to that point he was a professor at the University of Augsburg and at the Freie Universität Berlin. Guest professorships led him to, among other locations, Genoa, Paris, Oxford, Moscow, and New York as well as to the Hague Academy of International Law. From 2000 until 2008 he was a member of Germany’s Monopoly Commission, this including four years as the chairperson. Basedow was, furthermore, a titular member and general secretary of the International Academy of Comparative Law and also a member of the Academia Europaea, the Institute of International Law, the American Law Institute and the board of trustees of the International Foundation for the Law of the Sea.

Jannis Gries studied law at the University of Hamburg and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. During his studies, he was awarded a Deutschlandstipendium as well as a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. He completed a number of internships over the course of his studies, among others at the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Federal Ministry of Finance. He was an academic staff member at the Institute from 2018 to 2024, first as student research assistant and later as research assistant under Jürgen Basedow. He passed his first state exam in January 2023. Starting at the end of 2023, he began his period of legal traineeship as a clerk at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) in Hamburg.

 

Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law