Diversity in Justice? (Paperback)
An eight-year-old girl goes on a playdate with a school friend on a spring afternoon, and the two children decide to play football in the garden. Unfortunately, the girl accidentally kicks the ball across the hedge, towards the patio of the neighbour, where it hits and breaks a porcelain vase. Should the girl's parents compensate the neighbour for the repair of the vase? According to French law, they should - parents in France are strictly liable for damage caused by their young children. But, according to German law, they should not - German parental liability is based on fault. Two neighbouring and seemingly similar European countries thus offer opposite outcomes to the same scenario. This contrast is illustrative of the legal diversity that spans across the domains of contract and tort law and across the European continent, which is often viewed as one of the biggest and most fundamental obstacles to (further) harmonization of European private law. The theory of legal culture
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