International Divorce and the Importance of Comparative Law

The current issue of The Economist contains an article on the variety of divorce laws worldwide and the implications for divorcing multi-national couples.  For the online version of the article, click here. Following is a short excerpt of the article: Read More »

How to Tackle a Comparative Law Problem

You are faced with a comparative research task. The sheer amount of material to cover makes you feel dizzy. You need a plan, but you do not know where to start… Here is some help. Professor Örücü has written an article [see the end of this post for the complete reference] outlining an extremely useful step-by-step approach that should get you started. Here is the gist of it: Read More »

How to Visualize Foreign Law in Class

Every instructor of a comparative law survey course is invariably confronted with one major challenge:

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Of course, real familiarity with a legal system can only fully be obtained by living and immersing oneself in a particular legal culture. Yet, embarking on a semester-long field trip to the different legal cultures of the world is unfortunately no option. Read More »

Comparative Law Methodology 101: Comparative Law and Economics

As noted earlier, the functional method of comparing legal systems comes increasingly under attack. Hence, alternative methods have been presented. For example, in 1994, Ugo Mattei celebrated the “methodological wedding  between the two most interesting recent attempts to understand the law: Comparative Law and Law and Economics.” [Mattei 1994, infra, p. 18] Read More »

Comparative Law in the Curriculum

The importance of a comparative perspective for the better understanding of our own domestic law cannot be overstated. (See an earlier post on this and other advantages of comparative law.) Yet, what place should comparative law take in the curriculum? Should a comparative element be included into every course on domestic law? Or should there be a special course on comparative law? Read More »