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Comparative Law Beyond Post-Modernism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2008

Anne Peters  and
Heiner Schwenke
Anne Peters
Affiliation:
Dr jur (Freiburg i.Br.), L.L.M. (Harvard), Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Walther Schücking Institute for International Law, Christian Albrechts University at Kiel. The authors thank Larry Catá Backer, Ina Ebert and Mathias Reimann for helpful criticism on a previous version of this paper.
Heiner Schwenke
Affiliation:
Dr rer nat Dr phil (Freiburg i.Br).
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Extract

The legal version of post-modernism has not failed to challenge comparative law. It points out that, traditionally, comparatists have participated in a project of objectivity, universalism and neutrality of law, of which the “new” approach to comparative law is altogether sceptical.1 In the era of globalisation, both the discipline and its critique have gained relevance. What the transition of post-socialist countries and the unification of Europe have effected regionally, globalisation now accomplishes on a global scale: it creates desires for harmonisation and, as a pre-requisite, legal comparison. However, not only the technical function of comparative law is needed, but also its critical potential. In the process of globalisation, different legal systems and different cultures are confronted with each other and must interact. This provokes new questions about the options and limits of comparative law and legal unification, regarding, for instance, the applicability of specific moral and legal standards to other cultures by comparatists and law-makers. These questions are all the more pressing as we begin to realise that governing globalisation, in particular economic globalisation, with the help of global law perhaps requires a concept of a global legal order which is based on a “global legal pluralism”.2

Type
Articles
Information
International & Comparative Law Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , October 2000 , pp. 800 - 834
Copyright
Copyright © British Institute of International and Comparative Law 2000

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References

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37. ”The spirit of universalism, which was perceptible already before, but especially in the last century, is the foundation of all ideas of a unification of the law” (Zepos supra n.35 at p.16).

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53. See only David, René & Brierley, John E. C., Major Legal Systems in the World Today. 3d ed. (1985) at pp.4–6Google Scholar. For Myres McDougal, the goal of legal unification is to expand a democratic world order “Most broadly conceived, that central, overriding purpose [of comparative law] is … the clarification for all our communities—from local through national and regional to global—of the perspectives, the conditions, and the alternatives that are today necessary for securing, maintaining, and enhancing basis democratic values in a peaceful world.” (McDougal, Myres S., “The Comparative Study of Law for Policy Purposes: Value Clarification as an Instrument of Democratic World Order”, in Butler, William Elliot (Ed.) International Law in Comparative Perspective (1980) 191 at p.196)Google Scholar. Kaiser speaks of framing a “general theory of democraticliberal constitutional law”. Kaiser, Joseph H., “Vergleichung im ōffentlichen Recht”, (1964) 24 Zeitschrift für auslăSndisches ōffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 391 at p.399Google Scholar. Zweigert & Kötz supra n.30 at $4 I, admit that comparative legal studies with the objective of finding better solutions havean affinity to natural law speculations.

54. ”At least in terms of actual results—as distinguished from the semantics used in reaching and stating such results—the areas of agreement among legal systems are larger than those of disagreement.” “[T]he existence and vast extent of this common core of legal systems cannot be doubted.” Schlesinger/Hans, Rudolf B., Baade/Mirjan, W., Damaska/Peter, R., Herzog, E., Comparative Law: Cases—Text—Materials. 5th ed. (1988) at pp.34–35, 39.Google Scholar

55. Zweigert Ko˘tz supra n.30 at p.34; but see much more cautiously Kötz, Hein;, ”Abschicd von der Rechtskreislehre?”, (1998) 6 Zeitschrift far europäisches Privatrecht 493–505Google Scholar at pp.504–505 (limited value of the functional approach). Critically Frankenberg (1985) supra n.4 at p.436: “The functional approach runs the risk of simplifying complex reality by assuming that similarity of problems produces similarity of results.”

56. Pound, Roscoe, “Comparative Law in Space and Time”, (1955) 4 Am.J.Comp.L 70 at p.72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rheinstein, similarly (1938) supra n.44 at p.619.Google Scholar

57. See, e.g., King, Michael, “Comparing Legal Cultures in the Quest for Law's Identity”, in Nelken, David (Ed.), Comparing Legal Cultures (1997) 119 at p.132.Google Scholar

58. Ferrari, Vincenzo, “Socio-legal Concepts and Their Comparison”, in Oeyen, Else (Ed.) Comparative Methodology (1990) 63 at p.69Google Scholar; Markesinis, Basil (Ed.), The Gradual Convergence: Foreign Ideas, Foreign Influences, and English Law on the Eve of the 21st Century (1994)Google Scholar; Cruz., Peter DeComparative Law in a Changing World (1995) at pp. 477–489Google Scholar; Zimmermann, Reinhard, “‘Common law’ und ‘civil law’, Amerika und Europa—zu diesem Band,” in Zimmermann, Reinhard (Ed.), Amerikanische Rechtskultur und europaisches Privatrecht (1995) 1 at p.2Google Scholar; Kötz supra n.55 at pp.497–504. The critical perspective on this issue is represented by Pierre Legrand, “European Systems are not Converging”, (1996) 45 I.C.L.Q. 52–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar(arguing that common and civil law systems are irreducibly different).

59. von Mehren, Arthur T., “An Academic Tradition for Comparative Law?”, (1971) 19 Am.J.Comp.L 624 at p.625CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Knieper, Rolf, “Rechtsimperialismus?”, (1996) 29 Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik 64–67Google Scholar (recommending inter-regional harmonisation and reliance on local traditions in post-communist societies); critical towards the “ideology of convergence” also Hill supra n.3 at p.110.

60. David Kennedy thinks of international law “as establishing itself through an ongoing process of imagination, creating doctrines and institutions as efforts to transcend and bridge what it imagines as differences in a world of cultures it seeks to hold at arm's length … comparative law shares this imaginative construction from the other side, seeing itself … as an intellectual project of understanding between cultures whose similarities and differences are foregrounded.” Kennedy supra n.l at p.554.

61. “[T]he comparativist must relinquish the comfortable position of the outside observer if the Other is internally split and decisively inflected by the West (and vice versa), then there is no wholly neutral position in which the comparativist can stand.” Berman supra n.4 at p.282 (emphasis added).

62. Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.91; see in that sense also Legrand, Pierre, “Sur l'analyse differentielle des juriscultures”, (1999) 51 Revue intemationale de droit comparé 1053 at p.1062.Google Scholar

63. One of the seminal contributions was Francois Lyotard's La condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (1979). Lyotard identifies as characteristics of the post-modern era the obsoleteness of meta-narratives, which were in modern times used to legitimise institutions, social and political practices, ethics and modes of thought. From the obsoleteness of meta-narratives results the irresolvable incommensurability of language games, which make consensual notions of truth and justice impossible.

64. Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at p.270. Note that by saying that the scholar needs “a deconstructive move…breaking down the conceptual repression”, the critic himself seems—in somewhat contradictory terms—to imply that this is possible.

65. Frankenberg (1985) supra n.4 at p.411 (emphasis added).

66. Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.64.

67. Cf. Riles supra n.8 at p.248.

68. See as an example Esquirol, Jorge L., “The Fictions of Latin American Law (Part I), ” (1997) Utah L Rev. 425, analysing René David's comparative work on Latin American Law.Google Scholar

69. Berman supra n.4 at p.281. See also Günter Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3.

70. Kennedy supra n.l at p.633. See also, idem at p.632, and generally pp.6O6–637 on the “Politics” and Governance Projects of Comparative Law.

71. Rogers, Catherine, “Gulliver's Troubled Travels, or The Conundrum of Comparative Law”, (1998) 67 George Washington L.Rev. 149 at pp.161–162Google Scholar. Sec also Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.67 on “underlying, sometimes irreconcilable, differences among legal systems”; also Legrand (1999) supra n.62 at p.1056.

72. See, e.g., Crossman, Brenda, “Turning the Gaze Back on Itself: Comparative Law, Feminist Legal Studies, and the Postcolonial Project”, (1997) Utah L.Rev. 525 at pp.526–527 and 537Google Scholar; Rosa, Hartmut, “Lebensformen vergleichen und verstehen. Eine Theorie der dimensionalen Kommensurabilität von Kontexten und Kulturen”, (1999) 1 Handlung, Kullur, Interpretation: Zeitschrift für Sozialund Kulturwissenschaften 10 at p.24Google Scholar. With regard to international law, David Kennedy likewise asserts that new approaches are on their way to overcoming the “routine conflict between defenses of its overt accultural posture and assertions of cultural relativism”, (Kennedy supra n.l at p.569).

73. Our distinction of two basic types of relativism presupposes a fact-value-distinction. This runs counter to the post-modernist tendency, which denies that facts and morals are two separable spheres. Not surprisingly, the post-modernist conflation of facts and morals goes very well with the negation of the existence of truth: Theories do not aim at the truth, but instead they seek to veil practical or moral attitudes, especially aspirations to power. However, facts and norms are two distinct categories. Norms guide and improve the conduct of humans, theories explain and predict, inter alia; the conduct of humans (Schurz, Gerhard, The is-Ought Problem: An Investigation in Philosophical Logic (1997) at p.279)Google Scholar. Normative expressions can never replace ontological expressions salva veritate; and norms are not derivable from facts, as Gerhard Schurz has recently explained in detail. There is no logical bridge between norms and facts (idem; especially at pp.278–285). We can therefore uphold the distinction between epistemic and moral relativism. This distinction does not preclude a psychological interrelatedness in practice. Assumptions about what is “good” and “evil” may psychologically influence what we hold to be true. For instance, we may be reluctant to recognise our own personal properties that we find morally undesirable.

74. See in detail on framework-relativism infra pp.822–824.

75. Historically, philosophers mostly thought of relativism (epistemic or moral) as individually-based, as a relativism of the “I” (beginning in Western philosophy with the sophists). Today, it is virtually always a group-based relativism that is discussed. In the ”I”-relativism, all insights and values are valid only for one person, in group-based relativism they are shared by the members of a group, e.g., a culture.

76. See Holenstein, Elmar, Menschliches SelbstverstäHndnis, Ichbewuβfltsein, Intersubjcktive Verantwortung, Interkulturelle Verständigung (1985) at pp.104–180.Google Scholar

77. See also Lenain, Thierry, “Understanding the Past: History as an Intercultural Process”, in Schneider, Notker, Mall, Ram A. & Lohmar, Dieter (Eds.), Einheit und Vielfalt: Das Vertehen der Kulturen (1998), 145–154Google Scholar, esp. at p.145: “But this concept [of interculturality] can and should be extended to the question of historicity, for when we face past periods of our own culture on a critical mode, we are dealing with cultural systems which prove as different from ours as any present-day ‘exotic’ culture would be.”

78. Popper 1994 supra n.12 at p.33. In fact, Popper identifies relativism in general with framework-relativism. This is not correct, because relativism can also have a non-cognitive foundation, i.e. must not be due to a special mode of thinking (e.g. axiomatic thinking), but may for instance be due to psychological states.

79. Idem at pp.59–60: “The myth of the framework is clearly the same as the doctrine that one cannot rationally discuss anything that is fundamental, or that a rational discussion of principles is impossible. This doctrine is, logically, an outcome of the mistaken view that all rational discussion must start from some principles or, as they are often called, axioms, which in their turn must be accepted dogmatically if we wish to avoid an infinite regress—a regress due to the alleged fact that when rationally discussing the validity of our principles or axioms we must again appeal to principles or axioms. Usually those who have seen this situation either insist dogmatically upon the truth of a framework of principles or axioms, or they become relativists; they say that there are different frameworks and that there is no rational discussion between them, and thus no rational choice. But all this is mistaken. For behind it there is the tacit assumption that a rational discussion must have the character of a justification, or of a proof, or of a demonstration, or of a logical derivation from admitted premises. But the kind of discussion which is going on in the natural sciences might have taught our philosophers that there is also another kind of rational discussion: a critical discussion which does not seek to prove or justify or establish a theory, least of all by deriving it from some higher premises, but which tries to test the theory under discussion by finding out whether its logical consequences are all acceptable, or whether it has, perhaps, some undesirable consequences.”

80. The theory of the theory-loadedness of observation is contradicted by evidence of theory-resistance of observation in the psychology of perception. For instance, even if we know that the moon at the horizon is not bigger than the moon at its zenith we still perceive it as bigger. Moreover, this theory often goes together with a false notion of science, namely that the theories on the functioning of an experimental apparatus and the side-conditions of an experiment are so closely connected to the theories which are tested by that experiment, that there results an inescapable circle. Normally, however, both theories are miles apart. This is very obvious in biology and medicine. The experimental apparatuses are built on the basis of physics and computer science, but the theories tested in the experiments are biological, and no one would say that the results of biological research were determined by physics or computer science.

81. See, e.g., references to Kuhn in Ainsworth supra n.10 at p.30; or in Rosa supra n.72 at pp. 12–17.82. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; (3rd Ed. 1996) at pp.198–204.Google Scholar

82. Ermarth supra n.ll at p.588.

83. A paradigmatic example is Lasser, Mitchel de S.-O.I'E., “Comparative Law and Comparative Literature: A Project in Progress”, (1997) Utah L.Rev. 472–524Google Scholar, constructing and deploying a “‘literary theory’ methodology in order to analyze the complex significations produced by the French and American judicial discourses” (idem; at p.471); see also the extensive footnote in Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at pp.49 n.12 and 54–59 (”Comparative Law as a Phenomenon of Translation”).85. Whorf, Benjamin Lee, “An American Indian Model of the Universe”, Manuscript approx. 1936, in Carroll, John B. (Ed.) Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) 57, at pp.57–58.Google Scholar

84. Malotki, Ekkehart, Hopi Field Notes (1980)Google Scholar, quoted in idem, Hopi lime: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal Aspects in the Hopi Language (1983) at p.vi.

85. Interestingly enough, moral relativism is often defended in a philosophical camp which otherwise contrasts with post-modernism in most respects, the communitarian one. Communitarians emphasise that moral intuitions, capacities and reactions are created and determined through upbringing and education in concrete communities. See in particular Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (1984)Google Scholar; also Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self; 1989, Chapter 1, entitled “Inescapable Frameworks”, pp.3–24.Google Scholar

86. But see Apel, Karl-Otto, Transformation der Philosophic VoL II: Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft (1973), esp. 400, 420–425Google Scholar; Jürgen, , “Diskursethik—Notizen zu einem Begründungsprogramm”, in idem, Moralbewuβtsein und kommunikatives Handeln (1983), 53, at p.105Google Scholar; Habermas, Jüirgen, ”Erlä zur Diskursethik”, in idem, Erlä, Disskursethik; 2nd ed. (1992), 119, at p.195Google Scholar for the assertion that engaging in a discourse necessarily implies recognition of some universal norms.

87. See, e.g., LungJingtai, , “Wo Respekt zu Gleichgültigkeit wird”,(1998) No. 78, 2 April Frankfuter Allgemeine Zeitung 39.Google Scholar

88. See for further arguments against moral cultural relativism and for a “deliberativeuniversalism” Amy Gutmann, “The Challenge of Multiculturalism”, (1993) 22 Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs 171–206.Google Scholar

89. “The questions comparativists ask will reflect their own perceptual prisms and affect their receptivity to data from observed legal cultures”. Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.58. “One of the dangers of comparative law is the temptation to mould the data with a view to substantiating a preconceived thesis. This temptation is exacerbated by the fact that the legal material which comparative research provides is extremely diverse and malleable.” Hill supra n.3 at p.107.

90. Frankenberg (1985) supra n.4 at p.414.

91. Demleitner supra n.9 at p.654; Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at pp.48–49 (distortion inevitably prevails in the comparative act).

92. Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.58. The American legal anthropologist Rebecca French reminds the comparatist of “all the practical and conceptual assumptions that American lawyers already know about the world and about the law: the dimensions of space and time, the subtleties of legal myth and narrative, the legal rituals that define how actors act, speak, and move in a legal forum, social hierarchies that influence their decisions, the aspects of authority, power and legitimation they understand. But what if most of or all of these practical and conceptual assumptions were not only different from those that apply in Tibet but arranged in networks or sets or relations that were also entirely different? What if, when one first asked Tibetans about law, they said that no such category existed?” Rebecca Redwood French, The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet (1995) at p.57. French's marvellous book is a highly impressive attempt to understand a very different legal culture.

93. Crossman supra n.72 at p.526.

94. Schlag, Pierre, “Normativity and the Politics of Form”, (1991) 139 U. Pennsylvania L.R. 801 at pp.808 and 812Google Scholar

95. Tokarczyk, Roman, “Some Considerations on Comparative Law”, (1990) 59 Revista Juridica Univeridad de Puerto Rico 951 at p.959.Google Scholar

96. Ainsworth supra n.10 at p.30; see also Legrand (1999) supra n.62 at pp.1054, 1057–58.

97. Matthes, Joachim, “The Operation Called ‘Vergleichen’”, in idem (Ed.), Zwischen den Kulturen? Die Sozialwissenschaften vordem Problem da Kulturvergleichs (1982) 75 at p.83.Google Scholar

98. See, e.g., Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at p.263.

99. Supra pp.820–821.

100. See Perelman, Chaim & Olbrechts-Tyteca, Louise, The New Rhetoric-A Treatise on Argumentation (1969) (Wilkinson, John and Weaver, Purcell transl.) (orig. 1958) at pp.111–112.Google Scholar

101. The power theme has been primarily developed by Michel Foucault. See as an overview the interview with Foucault: “Wahrheit und Macht” (Truth and Power), in Foucault, Michel, Dispositive der Macht: Über Sexualität, Wissen und Wahrheit (1978) 21–74.Google Scholar

102. Cf. Lyotard, Jean-Francois, “Réponse a la question: Qu'est-ce que le postmoderne?,” (1982) Vol. 37, No. 419 Critique: revue générale des publications francaises et étrangéres 357Google Scholar, German transl.: “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist postmodern?, ” in Engelmann, Peter (Ed.), Postmoderne und Dekonstruktion (1990) 33 at pp.48–49Google Scholar on unrepresentability and difference; Lyotard, Jean-Francois, Un enjeu des uttes des femmes (1976)Google Scholar, German translation: “Ein Einsatz in den Käempfen der Frauen”, in idem, Das Patchwork der Minderheiten (1977) 52–72. Consequently, the new vision of comparative law has its “focus on difference” (Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.83).Google Scholar

103. See, e.g., Schlag supra n.96 at pp.803–804. Human rights law is, in critical eyes, “not based on innocent humanitarianism, timeless and universal Truth. Rather, is a situated, contingent, and contested knowledge that is discursively produced by multiple dominating and resistant discourses. In its current form, human rights law naturalises and legitimises the subjugating and disciplinary effects of European, masculinist, heterosexual and capitalist regimes of power.” Dianne Otto, “Rethinking Universals: Opening Transformative Possibilities in International Human Rights Law, ” (1997) 18 Austral. Yearbook Int'l L. 1 at p.35. No wonder that traditional comparatists are deemed to share a “status-quo orientation and a fairly uncritical acceptance of the ideological foundations of the hegemonic legal regimes”. Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at p.266. Berman advises critical comparatists to “refuse the homogenizing and essentializing gestures of the tradition: instead, show how all cultural formations are split, hybrid, and embedded in contexts of power”. (Berman supra n.4 at p.281).

104. Matthes supra n.99, at p.84.

105. Straub, Jürgen, Handlung, Interpretation, Kritik Grundzüge einer textwissenschaftlichen Handlungsund Kulturpsychologie (1999) at p.6.Google Scholar

106. Matthes supra n.99 at pp.81–82.

107. See Frankenberg (1997)supra n.3 at p.263 on the mainstreamer as a “hegemonic self, a representative of legal paternalism”.

108. Berman supra n.4 at p.282.

109. See idem, passim; Kennedy supra n.l at p.618; Esquirol supra n.68 at p.470, on comparatists' “fiction of Europeanness” of Latin American Law.

110. Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at p.261. See similarly Hill supra n 3 at pp.109–110 on the pervasive influence of the political climate of the time on comparative scholarship.

111. Esquirol supra n.68 at p.437. Esquirol seeks to show that René David's descriptions of Latin American law “are subordinate to a politico-theoretical project” (idem at p.438).

112. Olsen, Frances, “The Drama of Comparative Law”, (1997) Utah L.Rev. 275 at p.278Google Scholar.”Comparativists should recognize the power relations involved” (idem).

113. Kennedy supra n.l at p.619. According to Kennedy, the comparatist's modest posture as expert or erudite reinforces the internationalist's claim to govern for a space beyond culture. By dividing the assimilable from the exotic, the comparatist stabilises the boundaries between centre and periphery while reinforcing the claim that those boundaries are matters of culture and history rather than political products of anongoing international regime. “The comparativist, in this sense, works as an ideologist for the global system of government”, idem at p.636.

114. Hill supra n.3 at p.106, also p.107.

115. “[T]he comparative law agenda is largely conditioned by an uncritical attitude towards fundamental issues of social and economic organization.” Hill supra n.3 at p. 106.

116. Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at p.263.

117. Idem at pp.263–265.

118. Esquirol supra n.68 at p.437 on René David's writing on Latin America.

119. Frankenberg (1985) supra n.4 at p.421.

120. Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at pp.265–266.

121. Idem at p.273.

122. Idem at p.262.

123. See, e.g., Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.48.

124. Borges, Jorge Louis, “Die analytische Sprache John Wilkins”' in idem, Das Eirte und die Vielen: Essays zur Litcratur (1966) 209 at p.212 (first published in Historia de la eternidad; 1953).Google Scholar

125. Foucault, Michel, Les mots et Its choses (1966) (p.17Google Scholar of the German translation, Die Ordnung der Dinge; 14th ed. 1997).

126. See for a moderate criticism of the doctrine of legal families Ko˘tz supra n.55 at pp.493–505; for a new taxonomy Ugo Mattei (1997) 45 Am.J.Comp.L. 5–44 (suggesting the division of the world legal systems into the three families of the rule of professional law, the rule of political law, and the rule of traditional law).

127. Frankenberg (1985) supra n.4 at p.421.

128. Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at p.267.

129. Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.45.

130. See Grosswald Oman supra n.6 at p.59, whose “immersion approach” to comparative law “suggests that law does not have a life of its own”. See also French supra n.93 at pp.xiii and 57.

131. See Eco, Umberto, La ricerca delta lingua perfetta netla culiura europea (4th ed. 1993) at p.222Google Scholar; Jingtai supra n.89.

132. For example, a macro-comparison (and classification) can be undertaken with regard to the aspect of valid legal sources. This aspect of classification will furnish two classes: codified (statutory) law and uncodificd, judge-made law. Other possible aspects of classifying legal systems may be the systems' concept of law, the legal methods applied, the style of legal thought, or the dominating type of lawyers, the leading theory of interpretation of law, the leading theory of legitimation of law, and so on.

133. Frankenberg (1997) supra n.3 at p.263; see already Hill supra n–3 at p.106.

134. Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.61.

135. Fletcher, George P., “The Universal and the Particular in Legal Discourse”, (1987) Brigham Young University L.R. 335 at p.350.Google Scholar

136. Kennedy supra n.l at p.590 n.76.

137. Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at pp.53, 66–78, quotation at p.66 n.76.

138. Hill supra n.3 at p.104. See also Kennedy supra n.l at p.561 (pointing out that functionalism has claimed to be an objective strategy, a way of avoiding the temptation to subjective judgement and premature closure).

139. Hill supra n.3 at p.107.

140. This objection has been forcefully raised by Watson, Alan, Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law; 2d ed. (1993), esp. at pp. 1077–118Google Scholar. Watson discovered an extensive and important practice of legal borrowing. If law on a large scale can be borrowed from a very different place and survive to a very different time, then there can be no simple relationship between a society and its law, he concludes.

141. Glendon supra n.40 at pp.8–9. See also Fletcher's critique of functionalism, advocating an approach that takes the legal discourse and its linguistic particularities as the starting point of analysis, not superficial functional resemblances supra n.1 39 at pp.335–351.

142. Frankcnberg (1985) supra n.4 at p.437; Kokkini-Iatridou, D., “Some Methodological Aspects of Comparative Law”, (1986) 33 N.I.L. 143 at p.160.Google Scholar

143. Watson supra n.142 at p.4; Hill supra n.3 at p. 198; see Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.71 n.93 for an example.

144. McDougal supra n.53 at p.219.

145. See for a great example of scholarship French supra n.94 (on the methodological aspects mentioned here at pp.16, 59).

146. Sec, e.g., Hill supra n.3 at p.115.

147. See only Carozza, Paolo, “Continuity and Rupture in New Approaches to Comparative Law”, (1997) Utah L.Rcv. 657 at p.663Google Scholar; Reimann, Mathias, “Stepping out of the European Shadow: Why Comparative Law in the United States Must Develop Its Own Agenda”, (1998) 46 Am.J.Comp.L 637 at p.645CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Frankenberg (1997)supra n.3 at p.270, comparative law needs “[t]he recognition of the law school as an exotic place, and of comparative legal work as an exotic practice”. Brenda Crossman suggests “turning the gaze back upon itself” as a comparative methodology to “make explicit the seemingly inescapable risk of ethnocentrism in the comparative project, while at the same time, deploying the comparison to challenge that ethnocentrism” (Crossman supra n.72 at p.537).

148. See only Schlesinger et al. supra n.54 at p.39: “To combat an unperceptive and uncritical attitude toward one's own law is indeed one of the main objectives of teaching Comparative Law”.

149. Glendon, Mary Ann, “Comparative Law as Shock Treatment: A Tribute to Jacob W.F. Sundberg”, in Nerep, Erik & Warnling-Nercp, Wiweka (Eds.), SäHrtryck ur: Festskrifi till Jacob W. F. Sundberg (1993) 69 at p.69.Google Scholar

150. This is no excuse for comparative projects that are too narow. In a largely unexplored field, it is certainly better to have a great diversity of aspects of comparison and to take them out of different fields instead of restricting oneself to one narrow aspect, e.g. economic efficiency. So over-specialisation may be counter-productive as well.

151. Popper, Karl R., The Open Society and Its Enemies (1950) at p.403Google Scholar. See with regard to comparative Rabel, law Ernst, “Deutsches und amerikanisches Recto”, (1951) 16 Zeitschrift für auslandäischcs und Internationales Privairecht (RabelsZ) 340 at p.359Google Scholar: “What remains of the coloring of the picture by origin and education of the scholar, will be corrected by international co-operation.”

152. Popper calls this “the idea of mutual rational control by critical discussion”. Popper, Karl R., The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1992) at p.44 n.1.Google Scholar

153. The post-modernist critics' objection is that discussion and rectification is a lure, because no real communication and collaboration is possible among scholars from different cultures (Grosswald Curran supra n.6 at p.66 n.76: “a Tower of Babel is the more logical outcome of international collaboration”). But to deny the possibility of communication is again mere framework-thinking and a good shield against competition and critique.

154. See on the significance of co-operation in science Bauer, Henry H., Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method (1992) at pp.43–62et passim.Google Scholar

155. ”Comparative law is superficial… [It] is hard enough to know in detail one branch of the law of one system, but to know the history of that branch and its relationship with that of some other system (and thus to possess a knowledge of the history of that as well) is well-nigh impossible.” (Watson supra n.142 at p.10).

156. Ainsworth supra n.10 at p.28.

157. Already Lepaulle, Pierre, “The Function of Comparative Law”, (1921–1922) 35 Harv.L.Rev. 838 at p.853Google Scholar: “First, it must be clear that a comparison restricted to one legal phenomenon in two countries is unscientific and misleading. A legal system is a unity, the whole of which expresses itself in each part; the same blood runs in the whole organism. An identical provision of the law of two countries may have wholly different moral backgrounds, may have been brought about by the interplay of wholly different forces and hence the similarity may be due to the purest coincidence—no more significant than the double meaning of a pun.” Likewise, Rabel wrote in 1925, supra n.45 at p.5: “The material of reflection about legal problems must be the law of the entire globe, past and present, the relation of the law to the land, the climate, and race, with historical fates of peoples, —war, revolution, state-building, subjugation—, with religious and moral conceptions; ambitions and creative power of individuals; need of goods production and consumption; interests of ranks, parties, classes. Intellectual currents of all kinds are at work … Everything is conditioned on everything else in social, economic and legal design.” See also Rothacker, supra n.22 at p.31: “All comparison in a particular field of culture” must be done “with methodical attention to all other comparative sciences”. “Hence no constitutional comparison, legal comparison etc. without information by analogous methods, problems, apories, results of comparative history of economics, religious history, history of languages, history of arts etc”

158. Berman, supra n.4 at pp.284–285.

159. See already in the eighties Holenstein supra n.76, most recently the focus section ”Interkulturelle Kompetenz und Hermeneutik” in (1999) 47 Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophic 407–477Google Scholar with contributions by Hans Julius Schneider, Joachim Matthes, Axel Horstmann, Jürgen Straub/Shingo Shimada; Rosa supra n.72 at pp. 10–42. See also Holenstein, Elmar, “Intraund interkulturelle Hermeneutik”, in idem, Kulturphilosophische Perspektiven (1998) 257–287Google Scholar; Kimmerle, Heinz & Wimmer, Franz M. (Eds.), Philosophy and Democracy in Intercultural Perspective 1997Google Scholar; Schneider, Notker, Mall, Ram A. & Lohmar, Dieter (Eds.), Einheit und Vielfall: Das Verstchen der Kulturen (1998).Google Scholar

160. Schleiermacher, Friedrich, “Hermeneutik”, in idem, Schriften (Arndt, Andreas Ed., 1996), pp.945–991 (orig. 1819)Google Scholar; Dilthey, Wilhelm, “Plan der Forsetzung zum Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften”, in idem, Cesammelte Schriften; Vol. VII (4th ed. 1965), 189, at 216–220Google Scholar; Heidegger, Martin, Scin und Zeit (15th ed. 1976), § 31–32 (pp.142–153) (orig. 1927)Google Scholar; Georg-Gadamer, Hans, “Hermeneutik I: Wahrheit und Methode”, in idem, Gesammelte Werke; Vol. 1 (6th ed. 1990) (orig. 1960).Google Scholar

161. Horstmann, Axel, “Interkulturelle Hermeneutik: Eine neue The orie des Verstehens?,” (1999) 47 Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophic 427 at p.438.Google Scholar

162. Kennedy supra n.l, at pp.590 n.76 and 591.