Péter Cserne ist von Oktober 2026 bis Juli 2027 Fellow des Kollegs.
Péter Cserne is professor of law at the University of Aberdeen. A lawyer and economist by training, he has published widely on jurisprudence, comparative law, contract law and the history of legal and political thought. His current research interests include the interplay of expressive and regulatory aspects of private law, nudging and behavioural interventions as regulatory techniques, new technologies and algorithms as objects and alternatives of regulation by law, as well as epistemic and ethical aspects of biography and life-writing in legal scholarship.
Péter earned his Ph.D. at the University of Hamburg, Germany with a thesis on Freedom of Contract and Paternalism: Prospects and Limits of an Economic Approach. Before joining Aberdeen, Péter taught at Northumbria and Hull Universities in England, Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary. He held visiting positions at Columbia, Oxford, and Toronto Universities, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Private Law (Hamburg), the Tarello Institute for Legal Philosophy (Genova), and was a fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS). He is an Extramural Fellow of Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC).
Cultural Diversity in/of Contract Law
Contract law provides the normative framework for voluntary private transactions, taking stances that are expressive, constitutive, or regulative. Core principles like party autonomy and freedom of contract allow parties significant leeway in choosing partners, terms, and governing norms. Agreements can also be subjected to non-legal, religious, or professional enforcement mechanisms.
As a social practice, contracting relies on intercultural communication where parties from varying backgrounds may interpret terms differently. This creates two key questions regarding communication failures: How and through which doctrinal techniques do national and transnational legal regimes intervene? How should contract law intervene in these scenarios?
While contract law appears culturally neutral and religiously agnostic on the surface, general standards for judicial oversight and rule-setting under uncertainty —such as good faith, fair dealing, unconscionability, and public policy—serve as entry points for intercultural matters. These legal concepts inherent to private law often rely on culturally constructed ideas of normality, such as "reasonable behaviour" or “essential” or "usual characteristics" (of goods and services).
During this fellowship I shall analyse how diverse contract law regimes (in today’s Europe) constitute, enable, and regulate the diversity of contracting parties and their practices.
Cserne, Peter ‘Economic analyses of repugnant market transactions: a modest typology’ Journal of Institutional Economics 19 (2023) 6, 930–943
Cserne, Peter ‘Paternalism and Contract Law’ in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Paternalism, ed. Kalle Grill and Jason Hanna (Abingdon: Routledge 2018) 293–310
Cserne, Peter ‘The Recodification of Private Law in Central and Eastern Europe’ in National Legal Systems and Globalization New Role, Continuing Relevance, ed. Pierre Larouche, Péter Cserne (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press & Berlin, New York: Springer 2013), 45–88
Cserne, Peter Freedom of Contract and Paternalism: Prospects and Limits of an Economic Approach (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2012)