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Summary Pacta successoria in Roman and contemporary law: observations in the margin of M.F. Merotto’s recent book. – The work I patti successori dispositivi nel diritto romano is the most recent publication tackling the problem of contractual succession according to Roman law. In the book’s introduction, Maria Federica Merotto responds to the voices calling for a more nuanced study of this phenomenon. Despite numerous exciting thoughts, the study displays shortcommings. The vast discrepancy between the declared methodological attitude and the actual course of the textual exegesis serves as a starting point for a more profound reflection on the shadow that modern legal concepts cast onto the ancient texts and the narrowness of traditional corpus of sources in conventional Roman law research.

Equality in exchange has long been a popular topic for comparative legal studies. The following article examines the legal remedies provided by Private Law for the instances of contractual imbalance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Until recently, most studies on this topic were limited to the French, German and English legal systems. The present article looks instead at the so-called ‘derived legal systems’: specifically, those of Switzerland, Poland, Italy and the Netherlands. Each of these systems marks a new stage in legal evolution, distinguished by a constant striving for greater flexibility and certainty within the field of contractual relations.

The Principles of Asian Contract Law (PACL) are the most recent addition to the series of uniform laws regarding transnational commercial contracts. This time, the harmonization initiative must address the problem of a great variety of legal traditions, all of which are quite difficult to reconcile. The author focuses on the object and objectives of the PACL by reconsidering the notion of “Asian law” and the alleged cultural neutrality of contract law as a legal discipline. The paper argues that the PACL project lacks clarity. Its ambitious objectives, while apparently intelligible, fail to produce the desired results in their entirety: the Asian regional harmonization of contract law turns out to resemble its occidental forerunners. The study goes beyond the traditional comparative law. It explores the model law (in the making) in a broader context of legal policy, parallel regional private-law-making efforts in the field of contract law as well as in the context of legal globalization.

Books debunking stereotypes are particularly noteworthy. Such is the monograph of S. Lo Iacono. The author compares Italian, Swiss, and Roman laws to eventually demonstrate that contracts on succession do not in fact infringe the freedom of testation to the extent that they are usually thought to.