Judge-Made Contracts: Reconstructing Unconscionable Contracts
Although unconscionability is thought to be a nearly exhausted topic, there are still some disputed issues regarding its remedies. This paper discusses one of these issues, namely the judicial reconstruction of unconscionable contracts or unreasonable contract clauses. More concretely, in many legal systems the judge is granted, at least in some cases, the power to revise the terms of unconscionable contracts: he may substitute "reasonable" terms for the "unreasonable" ones so that the contract remains valid. Nevertheless, an attempt by the judge to adjust an "unreasonable" term will create opportunism from both sides and will lead to arbitrary judicial decisions, thus upsetting the security of transactions and inevitably leading to higher transaction costs. Hence we argue that, with a few exceptions pertaining to monopoly or collusion situations, the judge should only decide between enforceability and non-enforceability of the contract or the clause. If the parties want their void contract to be enforced they can always renegotiate after the court decision and modify it themselves.
Duress in Contracts: An Economic Analysis forthcoming in Contract Law and Economics, ed. Gerrit de Geest (Cheltenham: Elgar 2009) (Elgar Encyclopedia of Law and Economics 2 nd ed. vol. 2)
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the economic analysis of contractual duress. The focus will be on the distinctive features of the economic perspective on the duress doctrine, as developed in the theoretical literature of law and economics. Before discussing the results of economic analysis, the legal background and some non-economic theories of duress are briefly presented.
The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice ten years on: Successes and future challenges under the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Paperbacks. June 2010
This book celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) by bringing together the views of key practitioners and policy-makers who have played an outstanding role in thinking about and shaping EU policies on freedom, security and justice. 
 
Ten years ago, the member states transferred competences to the EU for law and policy-making in the fields of immigration, asylum and border controls, and began the transfer process for criminal justice and policing. This decade of European cooperation on AFSJ policies has experienced very dynamic convergence, the enactment of a large body of European law and the setting-up of numerous EU agencies working in these domains. Such dynamism in policy-making has not been without challenges and vulnerabilities, however. As this collective volume shows, the main dilemmas that lie ahead relate to an effective (while more plural) institutional framework under the Treaty of Lisbon, stronger judicial scrutiny through a greater role for national courts and the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, better mechanisms for evaluating and monitoring the implementation of EU AFSJ law and a more solid fundamental rights strategy. The contributions in this volume address the progress achieved so far in these policy areas, identify the challenges for future European cooperation in the AFSJ and put forward possible paths for making more progress in the next generation of the EU’s AFSJ.