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On April 4, 2019, the second session of the Overseas Law Forum was successfully held in Conference Room 116 of the Law School, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. The keynote speaker of this forum session is Professor Looschelders of the Law School of the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. The theme of this forum session is“German Law of Obligation – The System, Basic Principles and New Development”. The forum session was hosted by Associate Professor Li Yu, School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, interpreted by Mr. Liu Yang from the School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and attended by Mr. Shen Xiaojun from the School of Law, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics. Students from the law school and other schools as well as legal practitioners participated in the forum session.

On behalf of the law school, Mr. Li Yu expressed a warm welcome to Professor Looschelders, and presented a brief introduction to his academic background and representative works. Following that, Professor Looschelders presented a splendid speech around the theme of “German Law of Obligation – The System, Basic Principles and New Development”. The content of the forum session is mainly divided into three parts: the basis of law of obligation, the generation of obligation, and the law on default of obligation.

Firstly, Professor Looschelders presented a brief introduction to the basic contents of “what is obligation”, “what is the difference between law of obligation and property law” and “what is the effect of obligation”. His presentation highlighted that Germany’s law of obligation is different from the legislation of some other countries in the world by abstracting the common rules that Germany’s law of obligation can be applied to both discretionary and statutory obligations, that is, the general provisions of law of obligation; On the other hand, the advantages and disadvantages as well as system effect of this separate provision on general provisions of obligation law were briefly analyzed. Based on the distinction between protective obligation and giving obligation, Professor Looschelders compared different normative ways towards solve the issue of infringement between German law and Anglo-American laws.

Afterwards, by taking contractual freedom and contractual justice as the outline, Professor Looschelders introduced contracting as the most important way of initiating obligation through many vivid cases. In principle, contracting can only produce effect between the parties to a contract, but sometimes the effect will expand to third parties; The typical parties include: contract for the benefit of the third party, attached contract with the protection of third-party role and so on.

Lastly, the session developed to its core phase, namely, law of defaults in performance. Professor Looschelders compared the law of obligation system before and after the revision of German Civil Code in 2002. On the issue of general defaults in performance, in the old law, it was only specified the failure of performance and the delay in performance. After the revision of the new law, the system of active infringement of creditor’s rights is also included; Also, on the basis of the trend of law development in the world, a general clause governing all defaults in performance is set out in Article 280 of the German Civil Code, which takes the breach of obligation as the core. After that, Professor Looschelders also introduced briefly the way of imputation and the standards of fault judgment in German civil law.

During Q&A session, teachers and students showed their glow of interest. Around but not limited to the content of this forum session, they put forward various puzzles encountered in their study and research, and Professor Looschelders provided detailed and earnest answers to these questions.

This session of overseas law forum was successfully concluded within warm applause.

Contributed by:Maqiang

Photograph by:Huangqian