The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations

negotiorum gestio
appeals also to common law authors: see 
Birks 
(fn 110) 21 f; 
J Kortmann
, Altruism in Private Law. 
Liability for Nonfeasance and Negotiorum Gestio (2005) 164 ff, 175 ff. The Study Group on a 
European Civil Code has even proposed a rather broad set of principles on the institution: 
C von Bar
, 
Principles of European Law. Benevolent Intervention in Another‟s Affairs (PEL Ben Int), (2006). 
But see 
Jansen
(2007) 15 ZEuP 958.
 

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26 
accepted concept of non-contractual obligations in European private law. 
Nevertheless, such a concept is possible and might contribute to a better 
understanding of non-contractual obligations – and to private law as a whole – by 
reconnecting tort law and large parts of unjustified enrichment on the basis of the 
three fundamental ideas explained above: namely, the ideas of individual 
responsibility, corrective justice, and the protection of reliance in the integrity of 
one‟s rights and in the lawful and trustworthy behaviour of one‟s fellow-citizens. 
However, it has also been seen that there can be no such comprehensive concept of 
non-contractual obligations unless it is fully understood that the dividing line 
between contractual and non-contractual obligations separates the law of unjustified 
enrichment into two independent parts, one closely related to the law of contract, 
the other to tort law. It must be doubted whether the rather recent introduction of a 
unified „law of unjustified enrichment‟ in the European legal systems
140
has really 
been a felicitous development. And it has also been seen that discussions 
presupposing that a question such as pre-contractual responsibility belongs either to 
contract law or to the law of delict are liable to mislead: rather, it is based on 
principles both of contract law and tort law. 
Arguments such as those proposed in this article are based on the 
assumption that comparative law alone cannot be a sufficient basis on which to 
develop a European private law. Of Course, a comparative view of the present state 
of the law in Europe must always be the starting point for every genuinely European 
legal argument. Yet comparative observations must be complemented with a 
historical or doctrinal explanation of the actual similarities and divergences between 
the different legal systems and with theoretical reflection upon the present state of 
the law. Indeed, the Europeanization of private law offers a chance to rethink 
inherited concepts and rules. This work should be done before lawyers set about 
drafting a European civil code. Before such an instrument can be drawn up in a 
satisfactory way, European lawyers may have to devise new conceptual tools that 
common instruments for reconstructing current law in a teleologically and 
intellectually adequate way. This is a „constructive enterprise‟
141
that may not only 
make it necessary to identify a national 
Sonderweg 
but also to overcome an 
inadequate, dysfunctional common heritage. 
The division of non-contractual obligations into two or more mutually 
independent classes of obligations (torts, enrichment, and sometimes 
negotiorum 
gestio
etc) constitutes such a problematical heritage if it prevents lawyers from 
understanding the common value basis of those obligations. Hence, there can be no 
doubt that a Journal of European Tort Law is highly desirable for stimulating and 
channelling the debate on non-contractual liability. However, it should not make 
European lawyers further ignore the close connections between tort law and the law 
of unjustified enrichment. 
140
Jansen
(fn 115) 40 ff. 
141
See 
R Zimmermann
, Comparative Law and the Europeanization of Private Law, in: 
M Reimann/R Zimmermann (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (2006) 539, 577: 
„Beyond Comparative Law‟; 
N Jansen
, Dogmatik, Erkenntnis und Theorie im europäischen 
Privatrecht 13 [2005] ZEuP 750 ff. 
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