Interpersonal justice as partial justice

Despite being sympathetic to the aim of Martijn Hesselink’s paper to explore how private law might be used to tackle gross inequalities, it is argued that private law is based fundamentally on the moral principles of interpersonal justice, which being a kind of partial justice as explained by Thomas Nagel are distinct and often opposed to the impartial standards of justice used in theories of social justice. European private law either has to abandon the principles of interpersonal justice in favour of a goal-oriented regulation or alternatively a richer conception of interpersonal justice may be developed that may assist to a limited extent the pursuit of greater equality.