The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Law

We can only claim to understand another legal system when we know the context surrounding the positive law in which lawyers are trained. To avoid ethnocentricity and superficiality, we must go beyond judicial decisions, doctrinal writings and the black-letter law of codes and statutes and probe the 'deeper structures' where law meets cultural, political, socio-economic factors. It is only when we acquire such awareness and knowledge of the critical factors affecting both the backgrounds and implications of rules that it becomes possible to control the present and possibly future developments of the world's legal institutions. This collection of essays aims to provide the reader with a fundamental understanding of the dynamic relationship between the law and its cultural, political and socio-economic context.

Editors' preface. Diapositives v. movies: the inner dynamics of the law and its comparative account: a companion M. Bussani and U. Mattei; Part I. Knowing Comparative Law: 1. Comparative law and neighbouring disciplines M. Reimann; 2. Political ideology and comparative law Duncan Kennedy; 3. Economic analysis and comparative law N. Garoupa and T. Ginsburg; 4. Comparative law and anthropology Lawrence Rosen; 5. Comparative law and language B. Pozzo; Part II. Comparative Law Fields: 6. Comparative studies in private law (insights from a European point of view) F. Werro; 7. Comparative administrative law F. Bignami; 8. Comparative constitutional law G. Frankenberg; 9. Comparative criminal justice E. Grande; 10. Comparative civil justice O. Chase and V. Varano; 11. Comparative law and the international organizations G. Bermann; Part III. Comparative Law in the Flux of Civilizations: 12. The East-Asian legal tradition T. Ruskola; 13. The Jewish legal tradition A. J. Jacobson and J. D. Bleich; 14. The Islamic legal tradition Khaled Abou El Fadl; 15. The Sub-Saharan legal tradition R. Sacco; 16. The Latin American and Caribbean legal tradition (repositioning Latin America and the Caribbean in the contemporary maps of comparative law) D. Lopez Medina; 17. Mixed legal systems V. Palmer; 18. Democracy and the Western legal tradition M. Bussani.

To understand a legal system, we first need to understand the cultural, political, socio-economic context which grounds and surrounds its law. This book aims to provide the reader with the fundamental knowledge of this dynamic relationship.

Mauro Bussani is Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Trieste and Scientific Director of the International Association of Legal Sciences (IALS). He is a prolific author and member of numerous prestigious international academic institutions. Alongside Professor Ugo Mattei, he is co-editor of the Common Core of European Private Law series.
Ugo Mattei is Professor of Civil Law at the University of Turin, Academic Coordinator of the International University College, Turin and also Alfred and Hanna Fromm Distinguished Professor of International and Comparative Law at University of California, Hastings College of Law. His work is highly interdisciplinary and has been published widely in books and journals.