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2 JETL 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/jetl2 and id is 1 raw text is: European Civil Liability Law outside Europe. The Example of the Big Three: China, Brazil, Russia by GERT BRUGGEMEIER Abstract: The current article examines how China, Brazil and Russia - three major second- generation industrial states whose legal systems are founded on European civil law - have reacted to the legal challenges of modern risk society in their recent codifications of tort law. The author provides an overview of the new liability regimes that have been put in place, demonstrating the extent to which traditional fault-based liabilities have been replaced by stricter liabilities based on risk, whether resulting from organisational shortcomings in in- dustrial processes or inherent in industrialisation and technical development. (2011) 2 JETL 1 I. Introduction The wealth of western societies is grounded on the division of labour, mech- anisation and technical innovation.' This process of societal modernisation, however, has its dialectics. The growth of knowledge is accompanied by the growth of uncertainty about possible risks created by this scientific and tech- nological progress.2 Complexities and contingencies are thus becoming the characteristics of the so-called modern risk society.3 Risk society is just the other side of the coin of knowledge society. One does not exist without the other. The reaction of civil liability law to this fundamental process is ambiv- alent.4 The private law of the 19th century still celebrated the result of the political revolution: the universality of private autonomy ('from status to Professor of Law, University of Bremen. This article is based on a lecture delivered in Vienna at the Institute for European Tort Law, Austrian Academy of Sciences, on 13 October 2010, and in Fribourg, Switzerland, at the Faculty of Law, on 5 November 2010. 1 Cf A Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776); E Durkheim, De la division du travail social (1893); for criticism: K Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der Politischen Okonomie, 3 vols (1867/1885/1895). 2 See, inter alia, N Luhmann, Soziologie des Risikos (1991); G Bechmann (ed), Risiko und Gesellschaft (2nd edn 1997). 3 Cf U Beck, Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (1986); id, Die Politik der Technik - Weltrisikogesellschaft und okologische Krise, in: W Rammert (ed), Technik und Sozialtheorie (1998) 261 ff. 4 The focus is restricted here to the continental European civil law regimes and their non- European heirs abroad. Common law is not encompassed.

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