Abstract

The system of sources of commercial law has deeply evolved in recent years with a significant change in its traditional features. The increase of new types of sources, the crisis of the hierarchic principle, the relevance of soft law can be observed in many sectors of legal system. However, with regard to current commercial law, those changes are triggered by three specific key factors: 1) the purpose of the European institutions to strongly harmonize the internal legislation of member States in order to strengthen the European single market; 2) the increasing complexity and technicality of some areas of commercial law; 3) the need to address systemic risks arising from firms’ activity and their effects on a worldwide scale. Those factors have led to: 1) a relevant proliferation of rules stemming from European institutions into the national law; 2) the increase of delegation of regulatory power to secondary legal sources; 3) the cooperation of private entities in the production of law. This essay aims to provide a synthetic overview of those referred phenomena, having regard to the need for democratic guarantees that the process of law production must always ensure.