Full Description
Awareness of the need to deepen the method and methodology of legal research is only recent. The same is true for comparative law, by nature a more adventurous branch of legal research, which is often something researchers simply do, whenever they look at foreign legal systems to answer one or more of a range of questions about law, whether these questions are doctrinal, economic, sociological, etc. Given the diversity of comparative research projects, the precise contours of the methods employed, or the epistemological issues raised by them, are to a great extent a function of the nature of the research questions asked. As a result, the search for a unique, one-size-fits-all comparative law methodology is unlikely to be fruitful. That, however, does not make reflection on the method and culture of comparative law meaningless. Mark Van Hoecke has been interested in many topics throughout his career, but legal theory, comparative law and methodology of law stand out. Building upon his work, this book brings together a group of leading authors working at the crossroads of these themes: the method and culture of comparative law.
With contributions by: Maurice Adams, John Bell, Joxerramon Bengoetxea, Roger Brownsword, Seán Patrick Donlan, Rob van Gestel and Hans Micklitz, Patrick Glenn, Jaap Hage, Dirk Heirbaut, Jaakko Husa, Souichirou Kozuka and Luke Nottage, Martin Löhnig, Susan Millns, Toon Moonen, Francois Ost, Heikki Pihlajamäki, Geoffrey Samuel, Mathias Siems, Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, Catherine Valcke, Matthew Grellette and Alain Wijffels.
Review
'In this beautifully produced volume, leading theorists and researchers look at significant aspects of their fields...As a whole, the most important contribution of this volume, however, is having collected essays which all indicate, in various ways, the role of comparative law in enhancing knowledge not only of law but also society, of context and interdisciplinary approaches, and of the significant place of imaginative interpretation for our understanding of law and society'.
Esin Örücü, The Edinburgh Law Review
Contents
1. Prolegomena to the Method and Culture of Comparative Law
Maurice Adams and Dirk Heirbaut
2. What is Legal Epistemology?
Geoffrey Samuel
3. Comparative Law as Method and the Method of Comparative
Law
Jaap Hage
4. Research Designs of Comparative Law—Methodology or
Heuristics?
Jaakko Husa
5. Law as Translation
François Ost
6. Controlled Comparison and Language of Description
Maurice Adams
7. Three Functions of Function in Comparative Legal Studies
Catherine Valcke and Mathew Grellette
8. Comparative Law and Legal History: A Few Words about
Comparative Legal History
Martin Löhnig
9. Comparative Contexts in Legal History: Are We All
Comparatists Now?
Heikki Pihlajamäki
10. The Curious Case of Overfi tting Legal Transplants
Mathias M Siems
11. 'Ius commune', Comparative Law and Public Governance
Alain Wijffels
viii
12. Things Being Various: Normativity, Legality, State Legality
Seán Patrick Donlan
13. Against Method?
H Patrick Glenn
14. Comparatively Speaking: 'Law in its Regulatory Environment'
Roger Brownsword
15. The Importance of Institutions
John Bell
16. Live and Let Die: An Essay Concerning Legal-Cultural
Understanding
Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde
17. Policy and Politics in Contract Law Reform in Japan
Souichirou Kozuka and Luke Nottage
18. The Eurocrises and What Socio-legal Studies Could Do about
Them, or: Comparing European Pluralisms from Legal
Cultural Approaches
Joxerramon Bengoetxea
19. Comparing the Legitimacy of Constitutional Court Decision-
Making: Deliberation as Method
Toon Moonen
20. Making the Case for European Comparative Legal Studies in
Public Law
Susan Millns
21. Comparative Law and EU Legislation: Inspiration, Evaluation
or Justifi cation?
Rob van Gestel and Hans-W Micklitz
