"Private law and the institutional (re)turn"

In times of crises and social transformations, private lawyers turn to analysis of the institutions of private law. They turn to the contract, property, tort, restitution or corporate personhood for both identifying the root causes of societal problems and for anchoring change in the legal system.

My inaugural lecture discusses this frequent (re)turn to institutions in sociologically informed private law scholarship. I trace the institutional turn as a strategy to be able to formulate critique and reveal the constitutive and transformative role of private law. I then continue to argue for the need to return to institutional analysis in the current moment of socio-economic transformations. However, I dare to suggest that we may need to return to institutional analysis in a different guise. Relying on new institutionalism in political and social theory I propose that we may need to draw our attention to the function of institutions in embracing conflicting societal demands. Such institutional approach will require us to adopt a new institutionalist approach to private law doctrine. Throughout the lecture, I will exemplify the return to institutions and the new institutional analysis by focusing on climate change and supply chain responsibility in tort law.

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