The 2024-2025 ACT Lecture Series, organised by Amsterdam University, reflects upon the place and role of private law in shifting scenarios. It asks whether and how private law norms, doctrines, and institutions are both driving and responding to emerging conflicts among different value(s). What can or should be seen as the value(s) of private law? Is a monistic conception of value tenable in pluralistic societies, and how can pluralistic conceptions of value hold in times of polarisation? Are private law values commensurable? How does private law shape or could shape prevalent moral-political values or modes of socio-economic valuation across different institutions, such as the family, corporations and other organised economic activity, civil associations, or (non-)commercial relations? And, ultimately: Why private law?

- 17 October: Günter Frankenberg (Frankfurt University) and Fernanda Nicola (Washington College of Law) will kick off the series by launching their new book titled, Comparative Law: Introduction to a Critical
Practice.

- 25 November: Riccardo Fornasari (University of Bologna): The Legal Form of Climate Litigation.

- 9 December: Robert Wai (Osgoode Hall Law School): Liberal Values and Transnational Private Law.

- 27 January: Sofie Cools (Radboud University): Agency Conflicts in Social Enterprises.