Transformations in Private Law:
Culture, Climate, and Technology

Transformations can occur in various domains. For the purposes of this Max Planck Research Group, we distinguish between transformations in reality and transformations in law. With regard to changes in reality, we focus on culture, climate, and technology, taking into account their relationships to society and human interaction. As regards transformations in law, our work is centred on private law in both practice and theory, including doctrine, jurisprudence, and methods of legal research. We also include different types of transformations, e.g., the replacement of specific practices, as well as increases in diversity and complexity.

Against this backdrop, the research group seeks to understand more deeply the legal mechanisms which ensure that the application of law is attuned to reality: What different mechanisms exist in this respect, in both the dogmatic and methodological spheres? To what extent are they reflected in theory and practice? How adaptable are these mechanisms with regard to different forms of transformations? And last but not least: To what extent do changes in reality demand, entail, or enable changes in law, legal practice, legal research, jurisprudence, and/or legal education?

The research group embraces the cross-disciplinarity of the Department ‘Law & Anthropology’, of which it forms part. We work with both legal and empirical methods from social anthropology in particular and the social sciences in general. Our aim is to fruitfully combine disciplines with respect to dealing with transformations in private law in order to gain a better understanding of the transformations as well as of the law. In doing so, we also address how knowledge from disciplines other than law, in particular from social anthropology and sociology, can be successfully integrated into legal doctrine, theory, and practice.

Currently, the group is working on two major strands: