Individual Will and the Civil Law Tradition: Rethinking Lex Privata

This volume sets out to explore the relationship between individual will (voluntas) and the legal rule. What unfolds in the following pages is a wide-ranging itinerary, moving between past and present, most notably ancient Rome and the contemporary world.

The guiding question is as radical as it is enduring: in what way can voluntas (a psychological impulse internal to the individual) come to determine the legal rule? European private law tradition rests on the premise that legally binding acts - contract and will, to mention only two paradigmatic cases - derive their force from individual will. From the Roman sources arises, with exemplary force, the notion of lex privata: the idea that private will itself may generate binding legal norms. Such a premise immediately leads to further questions. Above all, it compels reflection on the authenticity of that will: what if voluntas is compromised? The law of defects (error, dolus, metus) opens the problem of whether distorted or corrupted will can truly sustain the validity and effects of a legal rule.

The reflections gathered in this book approach the European civil law tradition as a broad and unified phenomenon, one in which law is inseparably bound to the historical and cultural contexts in which it takes shape.

Tommaso dalla Massara is Full Professor of Law at Roma Tre University. His research has long focused on the foundations and models of the European civil law tradition; he is author of numerous monographs and essays in Roman law and private law. He also serves as editor of academic book series with leading publish-ers and sits on the editorial boards of several distinguished international journals.