Comparative Law

Comparative law is the study of how legal systems construct, interpret, understand and apply their laws. It is as difficult as it is powerful, but has (at least) five purposes:

1. It helps the lawyer to detach from what she has learnt a legal system is or must be, to reach out to understand further facets of what law is, and to then understand differently (and perhaps reform) her own law.
    
2. It is the antidote to isolation, to parochialism and to the conceited belief that nothing could be worth knowing in laws outside of your own existing knowledge, experience or kindred systems.
    
3. It also helps lawyers see law as not merely rules, but as institutions, actors, cultures, language and history.
    
4. It promotes an understanding of law not only from one authority paradigm, that of the national state.
    
5. It suggests law might be explored as a construct with potential existence outside of national conceptions of it.

The examples for comparative study can vary, and different comparisons, on different topics can give results able to illuminate in distinct ways. This course selects three jurisdictions whose influence has spread around the world, with connections to the majority of legal systems.

Where possible, those English, French and German sources are then balanced with context and value from other legal systems.