Abstract

The Europeanization of national laws has marked a major change in Western legal history. It has implemented the remedial approach in civil law jurisdictions, thus creating a bridge between them and the Anglo-American legal world. Contract law has been re-arranged on the paradigms of consumer self-determination and market regulation. The traditional distinction between civil and commercial law has therefore withered away and has emerged even more clearly the tremendous modernity of the Italian civil code, which had reunited private law already at the beginning of the 40s. While the relevance of the law of obligations has definitely declined, company law has put itself on a par with contract law, both standing as the central core of a society based on private freedoms (the "Privatrechtsgesellschaft" of the German "Ordo-liberalismus"). The concept of governance may be a useful tool to explore similarities and divergences of these two dynamic areas of private law.