In this newsletter, we take stock of BACL achievements in 2024, and we thank BACL reps for giving time, energy and brain power to develop and support BACL activities. Blog publications cover an increasingly broad range of topics and jurisdictions; the PG Workshop continues to attract excellent doctoral students and early career researchers; and BACL seminars online and in person foster lively discussions on topical issues. We look forward to getting together next year to discuss comparative law in all forms on the occasion of our 75^th Anniversary – on which more below. 

Dr Sirko Harder, Professor Yseult Marique, Dr Mary Guy, and Dr Sophie Turenne (BACL Committee)

Welcome and news from the community

We welcome as new BACL reps Dr Irene Antonopoulos (Royal Holloway); Dr Emilie Ghio (Edinburg), Professor Joel Colon-Rios, and Dr Esin Küçük (Essex University); and Professor Lionel Smith (Oxford from October 2024).

News from the International Academy Comparative Law

The IACL 5^th Thematic Congress will take place in Paris on 15-16 November 2024, and we are pleased that former and current BACL reps will act as special or national rapporteurs: Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Samuel on the History of Comparative Law and of the Academy (Theme 1); Dr Sophie Turenne (Cambridge) on the Future of Comparative Law (Theme 2) and Professor Paula Giliker (Bristol) on the Teaching of Comparative Law (Theme 3).

The next General Congress will take place in Berlin in 2026. Topics are selected by IACL members for the purpose of selecting 29 of them for the General Congress. We will circulate any updates that we receive.

Activities 2023-2024

• Annual Seminar 2023

Our Annual Seminar 2023 unusually took place in June 2023, rather than September 2023), following the Society of Legal Scholars’ Annual Conference at Oxford Brookes University. It was dedicated to ‘Constitutional Legacies and Emancipation in a Comparative Perspective’ (see 2023 BACL Newsletter for further details). Two of our speakers, Anashri Pillay and Derek O’Brien, also wrote a blog post afterwards (here and here).

• Reforming Contract Law in European Jurisdictions

BACL co-organised a one-day workshop on ‘Reforming Contract Law in European Jurisdictions’ (KCL, 27 June 2024), jointly with Professor Solène Rowan (KCL), Dr Colm McGrath (KCL) and the Cambridge Centre of European Legal Studies. Papers from the workshop will shortly be submitted for publication in 2025.

Speakers:

• Professor Elena Bargelli (University of Pisa), ‘The “cause” of the contract’
• Dr Maxime Cormier (University of Paris II), ‘Reforming the law of special contracts today: reflections from the potential reform of French law’
• Professor Francisco de Elizalde (IE University), ‘The silent reform of Spanish contract law’
• Professor Birke Häcker (University of Bonn), ‘Looking Back at the 2002 Reform of the German Law of Obligations: Reflections in the Light of the French Experience’ 
• Professor Rafaël Jafferali (ULB), ‘Reforming Interpretation in Belgian Contract Law’
• Professor Laura Macgregor (University of Edinburgh),  ‘Retention of performance – a suitable candidate for law reform in Scotland?’
• Professor Catharine MacMillan (KCL), ‘A restatement of misstatements – should the English law of contractual misrepresentation be reformed?’
• Professor Pascal Pichonnaz (University of Fribourg), ‘The non-reform of the Swiss Code of obligations (CO 2020) and its aftermath’
• Professor Solène Rowan (KCL), ‘The 2016 Reform of French Contract Law: Some Recent developments’

Sessions were chaired by Professor John Bell (Cambridge University), Professor Paula Giliker (Bristol University) and Professor Catherine Valcke (Toronto University).

It was great to see one of our 2023 PG Workshop participants in the audience!

• PG workshop 2024

We returned to Oxford University eight years after a successful workshop there, and we are much indebted to Professor Matthew Dyson, Director of the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law, for an extremely rich programme of activities and the Institute’s generous hosting of the PG Workshop.

The Workshop took place on 22-23 May 2024 at Oxford Faculty of Law, with a special invitation from Professor Dyson to additionally attend a book launch on F.A Mann – The Lawyer and His Legacy by Gerhard Dannemann; a workshop on ‘From written to oral judicial procedures: an exploration of procedural changes and their effect on justice in Mexico’, and the Institute’s Annual Lecture on ‘Principles, rights and procedures: a comparative introduction to the Mexican Criminal Justice System’, by Justice Jorge Mario Pardo Rebolledo, Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación.

The workshop was well attended, with talks on a wide range of comparative law topics. Asian jurisdictions were the subject of much discussion, whether to evaluate the legal recourse for children affected by ‘sharenting’ in the UK and Malaysia (Nur Hafidah Abd Kadir); to analyse the divergence between Vietnamese precedents and Chinese guiding cases (Nguyen Thi Phuong), or to develop a comparative study of veil-piercing in the UK, Germany and Oman (Buthaina Al-Sawaii).

Regional comparisons were made on topics such as the recognition of marital status for regional migrants in Macao, Hong Kong and Mainland China (Zixuan Yang); AI governance models among ASEAN member states through the lens of Human Rights (Josephine Chee); and extended to sharia-based criminal reconciliations in the modern Muslim states (Gaber Mohammed).

The European Union (EU) was this year again the subject of various comparisons, whether on public participation in environmental decision-making in the EU (Justine Richelle); on efficiency consideration in merger control in the US, EU, UK, Canada and South Africa (Minh Dang);  as a specific ‘legal-linguistic system’ (Caterina Bergomi); and on the regulation of online information in the UK, the EU and Germany (Zizhang Cheng).

Interactions between comparative law, conflict of laws and international law also featured in presentations, including consideration of the role of private law to prevent adverse human rights’ impact in the context of global value chains (Begum Kilimciglu).

Finally, private law comparisons focused on the notion of legal transplants and the ‘irreducible core of trusts’ in the context of the French legal tradition (Michael Widdowson); remedies between neighbours in England and German private law (Florian Bode); and artificial intelligent agents and contracts (Joana De Faria).

• Online book launch

Mary Guy organised and chaired a discussion of Dr Theodosia Stavroulaki’s book, Healthcare, Quality Concerns, and Competition Law (Hart 2023) on 8 March 2023. Following the book presentation by the author, the discussion with Dr Mina Hosseini (UCD) and Dr Sandra Marco Colino (CUHK) focused on a comparison of competition in healthcare in the US, UK, and EU.

• Blog posts

The blog published approximately 30 contributions this year on a wide range of topics. The contributions are a mix of original contributions, book reviews and summaries of prominent publications. Notable blog posts include contributions to our series on Interwar Dialogue (click here for accessing the 11 pieces).

Particular thanks are due to Dr Radosveta Vassileva for her editorial work and blog posting over the last academic year, and to our book reviewers, Dr Marios Coustas, Dr Sirko Harder, Dr Radosveta Vassileva and Professor François Venter.

• Forthcoming publication

Yseult Marique and Radosveta Vassileva have submitted a proposal for a special issue pertaining to the Interwar Dialogue entitled “Overlooked cross-jurisdictional dialogues: Intellectuals, networks and friendships in the Interwar period and their long-term legacy”. The proposed special issue draws on the discussions triggered by the blog series mentioned above. Featuring 11 contributions, it will explore the human dynamics behind cross-jurisdictional dialogues. More information to come.

Watch this space!

• Annual Seminar 2024

The BACL Annual Seminar will take place on 3 September 2024 (9:30 – 11:30 am) on the occasion of the Society of Legal Scholars’ Conference at Bristol University. It is dedicated to ‘Vulnerable consumers and the law: comparative perspectives’.

Specials thanks go to the Society of Legal Scholars and its President, Professor Paula Giliker – also former President of BACL – for hosting our Seminar this year again. 

Programme:

• Dr Eleni Kaprou (QMUL), ‘Consumer vulnerability and the harmonisation paradigm in the EU- Insights from Greece and beyond’
• Professor Jule Mulder (Bristol University), ‘The vulnerability concept from a comparative perspective – Exploring the potential intersection of consumer and non-discrimination law’
• Professor Peter Rott (Oldenburg University), ‘Protection of law income consumers between EU consumer law and national welfare law’

Do register for this event online or (preferably) in person. Tea/coffee will be served from 9 am.

The BACL Committee and speakers plan to meet informally for dinner in Bristol on Monday 2^nd September (time and venue tbc) and cordially invite BACL members to meet with us then. Do let BACL Secretary, Dr Mary Guy (M.J.Guy@ljmu.ac.uk) know if you would like to come.  

• 2025 PG Workshop

The 2025 PhD Workshop will take place at Liverpool John Moores, and we are grateful to Dr Mary Guy for hosting it. More information will follow in early 2025.

• Online discussions on publishing in Comparative public law journals

Recent years have seen the emergence of a series of journals welcoming broadly comparative public law articles. This offers excellent opportunities for scholars; it also presents some challenges for editorial boards. We will discuss the reasons behind this enthusiasm for comparative public law in Europe and beyond with members of various editorial boards. More information to come.

• BACL turns 75 in 2025!

We are currently in the process of planning an anniversary workshop on 7-8 July in Cambridge (King’s College and Faculty of Law). Hold the date for a comparative law workshop in Cambridge on 7-8 July 2025.

We plan for some parallel sessions on 7 July, to accommodate talks on a wide range of topics, and we will focus on comparative methodology on 8 July (no parallel sessions).

The workshop will start at midday on 7 July and end on 8 July in the early afternoon.

More information will follow in September/October 2024.

• BACL Comparative Law Teaching survey

The BACL committee has compiled a survey of questions about teaching comparative law and undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Please consider completing this by clicking here – we wish to capture data and will share our analysis and present this in the context of the BACL 75^th Anniversary celebrations in 2025. Any queries, please contact Mary (M.J.Guy@ljmu.ac.uk).

Announcements

• Our next Annual Meeting will take place online in December 2024, date tbc.

• BACL also welcomes expressions of interests from reps to organise the PG Workshop in 2026 or onwards.

• As ever, any suggestions to contribute a blog post or a blog series are gratefully received. Please email your suggestions to Dr Sirko Harder (S.Harder[@]sussex.ac.uk).

• BACL committee is calling for any colleague who may have memories about activities (meetings, Annual Seminar, PG workshop), publications and/or membership of BACL since its inception (under its current name or its former one – the UK National Committee for Comparative Law). If you have fond memories, stories, and/or picture, we would love to hear from you! Please do contact Dr Sophie Turenne (st325[@]cam.ac.uk).

• Please do consider following the blog by clicking here. You will then be able to follow all our events and will receive approximatively one email per week during term time about comparative law developments among a wide range of areas of the law. This is an excellent way to provide comparative law illustrations for any modules you might be teaching!

ENJOY THE SUMMER BREAK