Approaches to Procedural Law: The Pluralism of Methods

Procedural law is no longer a purely domestic topic. The recent tendencies characterizing the field, such as Europeanization and harmonization, mark the evolution towards a new, cross-border dimension of this area of law. In addition, the growing importance of transnational legal relations in all spheres of civil and commercial dealings make it unavoidable to face the new challenges of procedural law across national borders. The traditional methods of national dogmatics, which have for a long time guided the reflections of scholars operating in the field of civil procedure, are not necessarily able to capture the increased complexity of the present. In light of this, it is particularly important to reflect on the methods (comparison, inter-disciplinary approaches and quantitative and qualitative empirical analysis, among other) which should be adopted in order to guarantee that research in the field of procedural law maintains its comprehensive ex-planatory power. The present book is the outcome of the second edition of the IAPL-MPI Summer-School, which took place in Luxembourg in July 2016 bringing together outstanding young post-doc researchers dealing with European and comparative procedural law, as well as with other relevant dispute mechanisms for civil controversies.