Review: Book Review

I. Only two years have passed since the first English edition of European Contract Law book was published and the three publishers in charge of its distribution have already announced the second one. The second edition in German had already appeared a year earlier (Europäisches Vertragsrecht, Nomos, 2017). Reiner Schulze and Fryderyk Zoll have thus published a book, in two languages, and twice, not only with clear foresight, but also in record time. The careful translation and preparation by Dr Jonathon Watson deserves to be mentioned. His participation in the work appears this time mentioned on the cover, besides being the object of recognition in the prologue of the authors. II. I had the opportunity to review the book in its first edition (InDret 2016, 1–6; European Review of Contract Law 2016, 178–182), so I have already described its contents, its virtues and some aspects that were perhaps missing. Above all, I have pointed out how useful and necessary Schulze and Zoll’s intellectual exercise is in trying to rearrange the materials that shape the acquis communautaire in the European contractual field. It is worth reiterating that the great merit of the work is that it tries to discover the coherence of European Contract Law as a whole, which requires explaining it through overarching concepts and ideas rather than focusing on isolated pieces of legislation, linking the materials and, when necessary, detailing their evolution. It is not, therefore, a question of explaining certain contracts in particular, but of building ex novo a general part of European Contract Law. Rather than proposing concrete solutions, the authors confine themselves to pointing out the convergences and similarities offered by the different sources, the divergence of criteria and, eventually, also the incongruities. An excellent example of this approach is given in Chapter 6, on the subject of termination of the contract (270 et seq). It should also be reminded that this is not a book on comparative law, although the authors do not disregard the comparison between texts, nor do they fail to take into account the soft laws that do incorporate such methodology (basically, the DCFR).