Pluralism as Inability to Choose Celebrating the Normative Diversity of EU Contract Law

In this article I locate Justifying Contract in Europe’s most unique contribution in its rhetorical and methodological commitment to pluralism, which, although Hesselink may disagree, is also a normative and political commitment. Starting from this observation, I then discuss the normative implications of this type of pluralism for the ways in which different reasons are reconciled and reflected in the law. As I argue, it may not be necessary, desirable, or even possible to choose the precise reasons why we support a certain normative answer – say consumer protection is desirable – nor to discard all concerns coming from those supporting the opposite answer – no consumer protection. This implies that ‘reconciliation’ describes better than ‘compromise’ what we need to shape contract law in Europe. In the conclusions, I reflect on what this may mean for the EU and EU Law. As I suggest, the type of pluralism the book evokes and celebrates, if not explicitly theorizes, offers a powerful rejection of accounts that see EU law as dominated by a narrow set of values and normative commitments.