PhD defence S.B. (Sarah) van Os

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation: 

This PhD thesis maps the views on justice of citizens in different European countries to explore whether and to what extent national legal cultures exist and what this implies for the future of harmonization of European private law. An interdisciplinary (socio-legal) theoretical framework leads to the hypothesis that views on justice differ between citizens of different European countries, aligning with applicable national laws. This hypothesis was tested through a quantitative empirical study (a survey consisting of written vignettes related to contract and tort law) amongst two thousand respondents from six European countries. The results reveal a striking level of European consensus and thus do not support assumptions on the cultural embedding of national private law. The findings shed an interesting new light on both the theory of legal culture as well as the European harmonization debate and have important implications for both (socio-)legal scholars and (supra-)national policymakers.