Papers from commemorative symposium for Jürgen Basedow published in the new RabelsZ
Private international law, European private law, uniform law – these were the three major legal fields in which former Institute Director Jürgen Basedow focused his efforts prior to his death in 2023. A commemorative symposium addressing these topics was held in 2024 by his academic pupils. The papers from that symposium have been published in the new issue of the Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law (RabelsZ).
The central question addressed by the symposium was how Basedow's work will continue to influence future developments and how his theories can be expanded upon with regard to emerging topics of global legal scholarship. The diversity of the symposium contributions demonstrates both the enormous thematic breadth of Basedow’s research as well as the unique blend of abstraction and practicality that his work represented.
The articles resulting from the symposium presentations discuss, among other things, the trend towards a new unilateralism favouring one's own law and relegating the equivalence of legal systems to the background. Various approaches to comparative law and the search for a system of uniform law are explored. European Union policy with regard to foreign private law is subjected to a critical analysis. Basedow's unfinished final work, “Uniform Law – Legal Responses to Globalisation,” published in 2024, is also praised for its nearly encyclopaedic completeness, systematic structure, and scholarly depth.
The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law, Volume 89 (2025) / Issue 3
Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law / Bastian Kurzynsky
