Private Norms and Judicial Systems: Brief Remarks on Quality of Justice and Competition Between Courts (France and Italy)

The privatization of law can affect essential state functions such as the administration of justice. In Italy and France, law is being privatized through the incorporation of standards on the quality of judgments developed transnationally and in drafting judgments, procedural acts, and agreements between courts and bar associations. National adjudication is also affected by the establishment of “international commercial courts”: specialized, private domestic courts that resolve international commercial disputes according to simplified or contractualized procedures rather than standard procedural rules. As a contribution to the general study of the privatization of law, the present chapter briefly outlines these events and highlight the effects of private norms on the judicial system, as well as their relationship to public norms.