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Legal Transplants in the Law of Secured Transactions. Current Problems and Comparative Perspectives

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Mentoring Comparative Lawyers: Methods, Times, and Places

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 77))

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Abstract

The chapter focuses on a field that has been studied thoroughly by Bussani, that is, secured transactions law. The contribution analyzes in particular the many actors and initiatives that in the last decades have pursued the goal of worldwide harmonization of secured transaction laws, scrutinizing the achievements and the limits of these experiments. In light of such results, the chapter also outlines the methodological contribution that comparative law (à la Bussani) can offer to legal change in the sector of secured transactions law.

A fortnight or three weeks before planting, give the ground a good deep ploughing, to prepare it for the reception of the tree. In planting, endeavor to suit the trees as well as possible to the soil […]

Potts (1807).

If a cocoa tree is to grow well, it needs more than anything else a soil of good structure, permeable and deep. If the soil is of good structure and contains much humus, the roots penetrate well.

Never plant cocoa trees in soil with a lot of stones, or in soil where there is some hard layer.

FAO (1970).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Unfortunately, up to now, it has appeared only in Italian language, a circumstance which so far has strongly limited its potential impact on the international scientific community.

  2. 2.

    This is my personal judgment on the basis of the extensive reading I have made in these last twenty years on STL in Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and English languages.

  3. 3.

    Text and protocols (Aircraft 2001, Rail 2007 and Space 2012) are available at unidroit.org with bibliographical references; see also the special issue of the European Review of Private Law, n. 12(1) 2004.

  4. 4.

    OJ L 168, 27 June 2002, 43–50.

  5. 5.

    For this evaluation of the Financial Collateral Directive see Commission staff Working Document, Impact Assessment Assignment of Claims, 12 March 2018, p. 124, available at www.ec.europa.eu/info/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/civil-justice/civil-and-commercial-law/assignment-claims_en. In Private Equity Insurance Group SIA v Swedbank AS [2016] EUECJ C-156/15 the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered the first preliminary ruling on the interpretation of some aspects of this Directive. In particular it qualified the requirement of the financial collateral as being “in the possession or under the control of the collateral-taker” in order for an agreement to qualify under the Directive (Art. 2 para. 2).

  6. 6.

    Text published in Zeitschrift für Europääisches Privatrecht, 1998, 766.

  7. 7.

    J.O. OHADA, n. 3 of 1 October 1997; see also ohada.com. Recast on 15 December 2010, in force since 16 May 2011; text available at www.ohada.com/actes-uniformes/938/984/chapitre-1-dispositions-generales.html.

  8. 8.

    Text available at www.oas.org/dil/model_law_on_secured_transactions.pdf.

  9. 9.

    Text available at www.uncitral.un.org/en/texts/securityinterests/conventions/receivables.

  10. 10.

    Text available at www.uncitral.org/pdf/english/texts/security-lg/e/10-57126_Ebook_Suppl_SR_IP.pdf.

  11. 11.

    Text available at www.uncitral.org/pdf/english/texts/security/Security-Rights-Registry-Guide-e.pdf.

  12. 12.

    Text available at www.uncitral.org/pdf/english/texts/security/MLST2016.pdf.

  13. 13.

    Subsequently supplemented by the 2017 UNCITRAL Guide to Enactment of the Model Law on Secured Transactions, available at www.uncitral.org/pdf/english/texts/security/MLST_Guide_to_enactment_E.pdf.

  14. 14.

    Beside Book IX of the DCFR, there is another kind of ‘cultural’ integration that has worked at European level. Differently from the former, it did not aim at producing a legislative-like text, but simply at refining the knowledge of secured transactions law. It was the multi-lateral comparative research project on “The Common Core of European Private Law”, directed by Mauro Bussani and Ugo Mattei, which has issued a book based on factual analysis of similarities and differences within a number of European jurisdictions on this topic (Kieninger 2004).

  15. 15.

    The documents substantiating this controversy are available at www.uncitral.un.org/en/about/methods/officialdocs.

  16. 16.

    According to the Report, over the past decade 82 economies have reformed their legislation governing secured transactions, with Latin America and Caribbean being the most recent example of robust reforming in this area.

  17. 17.

    Ordonnance n. 2006-346, of 23 March 2006, relative aux sûretés, JORF n. 71, of 24 March 2006, 4475, texte n. 29.

  18. 18.

    Loi 11 July 2013, Loi modifiant le Code Civil en ce qui concerne les sûretés réelles mobilières et abrogeant diverses dispositions en cette matière, MB, 2 August 2013, n. 2013009377, 48463, in force since 1 January 2018.

  19. 19.

    Law n. 119 of 30 June 2016, G.U. n. 153 of 2 July 2016, introduced in Italy a non-possessory pledge to be registered in an electronic register which, however, has not yet been implemented. Therefore, the new pledge exists only on the paper, and is still not effective.

  20. 20.

    Culture-specific traits of integration are to be found in the current French–German effort to prepare a legislative draft for a Code Européen des Affaires, containing also rules for STL. Working languages are French and Germany only. Prof. Bussani is partaking to this initiative. See www.codeeuropeendesaffaires.eu.

  21. 21.

    The Australian Personal Property Securities Act 2009, in force from January 2012 and the New Zealand 1999 Personal Property Securities Act.

  22. 22.

    An interesting perspective suggest that comparison between the effects of conflict-of-law rules under Article 9 and under the UNCITRAL Model Law may lead to ‘inverse’ transplants, that is from the rules in the UNCITRAL soft-law instrument into Article 9. The field of private international law the good terrain for new phenomena of cross-fertilization in STL to arise (Cohen 2018).

  23. 23.

    Smart contract is a “computer code that, upon the occurrence of a specified condition or conditions, is capable of running automatically according to prespecified functions. The code can be stored and processed on a distributed ledger and would write any resulting change into the distributed ledger”: definition by Smart Contracts Alliance/Chamber of Digital Commerce, White Paper, September 2018, available at www.digitalchamber.org/smart-contracts-paper-press/.

  24. 24.

    The Blockchain is a decentralized and cryptographic ledger of immutable data records replicated and distributed to each member/node of a peer-to-peer network. It allows the cryptographic recording of transactions and permits “smart” contracts that self-execute automatically if their conditions are met (Rodrigues 2018).

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  1. IUSLIT, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Francesca Fiorentini

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  1. Francesca Fiorentini
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  1. Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies (IUSLIT), University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Francesca Fiorentini

  2. Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies (IUSLIT), University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Marta Infantino

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Fiorentini, F. (2020). Legal Transplants in the Law of Secured Transactions. Current Problems and Comparative Perspectives. In: Fiorentini, F., Infantino, M. (eds) Mentoring Comparative Lawyers: Methods, Times, and Places . Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 77. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34754-3_1

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