Market Regulation and Private Law: The Quest for Reconciliation in European Law

The book offers a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between market regulation and private law in the face of contemporary challenges, such as climate change, the digitalisation of the marketplace, and growing inequality in society, with significant practical implications for a wide range of areas. It focuses on European private law to explore the uneasy interplay between the instrumental public regulation of economic activity and traditional, interpersonal justice-oriented private law in the multi-level and heterarchical legal order of the European Union (EU). By drawing together different elements of what are at present often disparate discourses of market regulation and private law, the book develops an integrated analytical framework that could help us better understand the interaction between the two. The central argument advanced in the book is that market regulation and private law are two sides of the same coin that can be reconciled with each other.