Comparative Security

I have taught in and directed Regent Law School's Summer Program in International Human Rights on several occasions. In fact, I expect to be in Strasbourg directing the program in the summer of 2015. You can go here to read about the program. And go here  for how to register. (Feel free to share the links with any law students you might know.)

In any event, I usually teach a class in comparative contract law. I haven't taught comparative secured transactions law because virtually no European countries have a unified law of personal property security. The United Kingdom has a un-unified system of personal property security but countries on the Continent make it difficult to grant a security interest in personal property.

It was thus with excitement that I downloaded Tibor Tajiti's new article, Could Continental Europe Adopt a Uniform Commercial Code Article 9-Type Secured Transactions System? The Effects of the Differing Legal Platforms (you can download yours here). Tajiti, professor of law at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, compares Australia's new unitary system of personal property security to its progenitor, the American Uniform Commercial Code Article 9 and then to various proposals for a unitary  system in Europe.

With regret I must report that matters don't look good. As Tajiti puts it:

The prohibitive complexity generated by Continental Europe’s colourful legal systems suggests that things will only change for pressing economic reasons. At the moment nothing foreshadows such a scenario; rather, the overall climate is unfavourable to the cause. Casting a favourable word on the Unitary Model in Europe today is an almost certain recipe for being perceived as a harbinger of United States legal hegemony.

Almost humorous to think that rationalizing law is perceived as a "harbinger of United States legal hegemony." But quite sad that improving economic activity through rationalization of the law is apparently irrelevant to European law makers. And quite ironic that the center of legal rationalization--Germany--can't seem to take this step.