This paper examines the interaction among institutions in European private law in times of societal change. It is submitted that a translation of national constitutional models of division of powers to the European Union cannot fully do justice to the nature of the interplay of courts and legislatures in Europe’s multi-level private legal order. A clarification of the legal-political significance of judicial law-making against the backdrop of the economic crisis can better explain judicial activism in certain areas of European private law. It also serves to address the (re)definition of the principle of democracy in this field and the possible contribution of democratic experimentalism. This, then, provides starting points for a re-imagination of the judiciary’s role in the communicative process of generating legal normativity in European private law.