How can History of Law contribute to Comparative Law? Or: How two “ancillary” Disciplines can join to undermine “the Discipline”
How can History of Law contribute to Comparative Law? Or: How two “ancillary” Disciplines can join to undermine “the Discipline”

Summary/Abstract: Legal scholars have repeatedly emphasized that comparative law and legal history are inextricably entangled. However, despite this theoretical statement, comparative lawyers did little to engage in legal history. Moreover, in some of the rare instances when they did appeal to historical insights legal history was unjustly instrumentalized for normative purposes. Thus, in the first place, this article seeks to provide a number of possible explanations for the comparatists’ nonuse and abuse of legal history. Secondly, some of the ways in which the two disciplines can fruitfully communicate will be put forth. Special consideration shall be given to how the approaches recently advanced in European legal history can contribute to consolidate the claims made within the heterodox branch of comparative legal studies (commonly referred to as culturalism).

• Details
• Contents