Blackwell Reference Online

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Comparative law is the field of study devoted both to describing the content and style of local, national, and religious legal systems and to exploring the similarities and differences among them. Comparative legal scholarship has contributed to law revision, to the unification and harmonization of law across national boundaries, and to the delineation of a fund of ideas common to many legal systems. The terms comparative legislation and comparative jurisprudence are often used as synonyms for comparative law , though occasionally with the different nuances that the terms themselves suggest. Comparative research that reports the substantive content or particular style of a foreign legal system is called descriptive comparison. Most authors believe that comparative law involves more than a description of foreign law. Theoretical comparison focusses on the similarities and differences among legal systems. Applied comparative law is concerned with finding the best norm for a given social or economic situation. Comparative research can be done on different scales ( Zweigert and Kötz, 1987 , vol. 1, pp. 4–5). Macrocomparison focusses on general questions, such as the differing styles of codification and statutory interpretation, the value of precedent, the importance of the scholarly doctrine in the development of the law, and the decisional styles of the courts. Microcomparison ... log in or subscribe to read full text