About the journal
A new journal for private law
Acta Juris Civilis is an independent international journal currently in preparation. Its scope is broad: private law doctrine, property and obligations, family and succession, and comparative private law.
A journal for private law as doctrine, as an institution, and as a way of ordering relations between persons.
Acta Juris Civilis is being founded on the conviction that private law deserves both close doctrinal attention and serious engagement with its history, its social setting, and its economic consequences. The journal will publish work that knows the law in detail while refusing to treat legal doctrine as self-explanatory.
Its pages will be open to the general part of private law, obligations and contract, property and security, tort, family and succession, comparative private law, Roman law, and theoretical work that speaks to legal questions. The journal is currently in preparation; no issue has yet been published.
The journal is operated by Standard Law and is editorially independent.
Aims & scope
The journal will publish original scholarship on private law, with a preference for work that is doctrinally rigorous, historically informed, or alert to the social and economic consequences of legal rules.
The journal’s scope is deliberately broad. It includes the general part of private law (民法总论) and the law of juristic acts (法律行为), property law (物权法), obligations and contract (债与合同法), tort (侵权责任), family and succession (婚姻家庭与继承), and comparative private law. It also covers Roman law and the history of private law, private law theory, and work that crosses disciplinary boundaries.
The journal does not prescribe a single method. It will publish doctrinal, theoretical, comparative, historical, empirical, and interdisciplinary work. What matters is a clear argument, serious engagement with the relevant law and literature, and a contribution that is accessible to an international readership.
What we plan to publish
- Research articles
- Review articles and review essays
- Shorter scholarly interventions
- Book reviews
- Proposals for special issues
- Work across doctrinal and contextual methods
Open access
The journal will publish open access, online, with no article processing charge (APC) at present. Any change to this position will be published clearly on this site.
What we look for
Every submission should make a clear argument, situate it in the existing literature, and explain why it matters. The journal will expect authors to take doctrine seriously, engage with jurisdictions other than their own where relevant, and write in a way that is accessible to readers outside their immediate field.
Private law in context
Doctrine is the centre of the journal, not its boundary.
Private law is a technical achievement and a social institution at once. The journal is interested in both dimensions. It will publish close analysis of concepts, rules, and cases, and it will also publish work that asks how those concepts and rules operate in practice, how they have developed historically, and how they compare across legal systems.
The journal is particularly interested in work that explains why a doctrinal choice matters: for the parties, for the coherence of the system, for the distribution of risk and advantage, or for the way private law understands the person. Comparative and historical work is welcome where it does argumentative work rather than serving as decoration.
A note on method
The journal does not require authors to adopt a particular theoretical stance. It asks only that the method be explicit, the materials be identified, and the limits of the argument be acknowledged.
Editorial formation
No editorial appointments or names are presented on this site at this stage.
Editorial appointments will be published only after they are confirmed and consented to. The full editorial team and advisory board will be published here before the journal opens for submissions.
The journal is not presenting a provisional list of editors or advisers. Doing so would imply appointments that have not been made and would misrepresent the journal’s current stage of development.
Editorial roles in preparation
- Editor-in-Chief
- Deputy editors
- Section editors for private law doctrine
- Section editors for obligations and property
- Section editors for family and succession
- Section editors for comparative and historical work
- Book review editor
- International advisory board
Expressions of interest
Scholars interested in contributing to the journal’s editorial development are welcome to express interest once contact details and procedures are announced. No editorial appointment should be inferred from this website.
Launch information
The journal is in preparation. Launch, call, editorial, and issue details will be published here when available.
| Item | Current status |
|---|---|
| Journal status | In preparation |
| Operator | Standard Law |
| Publication model | Open access, online |
| Article processing charge (APC) | None at present |
| Inaugural issue | In preparation |
| Editorial appointments | To be announced |
| Call for papers | Information to be added |
| Submission information | To be added |
| Peer review model | Information to be added |
| ISSN | Information to be added |
No issue has yet been published. No publication metrics, indexing status, or editorial appointments are claimed before they can be verified.
Read the inaugural issue statusDiscovery & indexing
The journal is not yet published and is not currently indexed in any database. After the first issue, the editorial office will prepare applications to the relevant legal and multidisciplinary indexes. No indexing, abstracting, or impact metric is claimed at this stage.
The journal’s metadata and content will be designed to support discovery and long-term preservation. Full details of indexing and archiving arrangements will be published once they are confirmed.
Accurate by design
We will not display journal metrics, indexing badges, acceptance rates, or editorial names before they can be verified. The site will be updated when the relevant processes are complete.
Development stages
The journal is being developed in stages. No dates are announced at this stage.
Scope and planning. The journal’s disciplinary range, editorial scope, and open-access publication model are established.
Editorial formation. The founding editorial team is being assembled. Appointments will be announced when confirmed.
Call for papers and submission information. Submission guidelines and the first call for papers will be published before submissions open.
Inaugural issue. The first issue is in preparation. Its contents and publication details have not been announced.
Contact
Contact details for the editorial office will be published when they are confirmed. The journal is operated by Standard Law. This pre-launch website does not accept submissions or correspondence.
Contact information
Editorial contact details: to be announced.
For information about the journal’s scope and status, please use the pages on this site. They will be updated as the launch develops.