Tag: it does not aim at making him feel too good before the end of the ceremony! President Rollinger

 

Eric Clive, former Scottish Law Commissioner and now Visiting Professor at Edinburgh Law School received an honorary doctorate of laws from Osnabrück University in Germany on 11 January 2008.  It is not every day that a Scots lawyer receives such an honour from a Continental European university, and for that reason Scots Law News is delighted to publish below the laureation address of Professor Christian von Bar of Osnabrück on the occasion of the award of the degree.  That, as Professor von Bar explains, was inspired by Eric’s great work on the shortly to be published Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) for a European law of obligations (of which there will be more anon on these pages).  But it also recognises a remarkable contribution to law in general, and Scots Law News is delighted to be associated with this tribute (which will also be published later this year along with Eric’s reply by the University of Osnabrück).  Congratulations to Eric, and our gratitude also to Professor von Bar, who found time amidst the pressure of leading the production of the DCFR to write these generous words and permit us to put them into the public domain.

 

Laudatio für Professor Eric Clive

 

Osnabrück, 11. Januar 2008

 

Dear Professor Clive, dear Eric,

 

This is a great day in the life of our faculty. We are conferring upon you the highest honour which a law school in this country can award: its degree of doctor iuris honoris causa.

 

I had to warn you in advance that in German universities gowns and robes are no longer worn, and that as a young faculty – ours is some 400 years younger than yours – we cannot display the splendour which a distinguished Scottish colleague could rightly expect at such an occasion. But youth is a deficiency that is cured day by day, and a lack of formal traditions can, we hope, be outweighed by personal appreciation.

 

It is today’s sole purpose to celebrate in public how much we admire your achievements and how grateful we are for your guidance in all these manifold endeavours to create a European private law. You might now be asking yourself: If that is the case