Article by Pierre Legrand
This Article takes the form of a critical contribution to the ongoing debate on uniformization of law in Europe and elsewhere from the standpoint of comparative legal studies. In developing my ideas, I have sought to privilege a theoretical and interdisciplinary approach to comparative analysis of law without which comparatists deprive their work of acuity and credibility; to support the expansion of comparative legal studies' preoccupations so as to embrace subject matters habitually associated with “public law”; to press the research agenda regarding the articulation of salient differences between the common law and civil law traditions (despite the indisputable need for comparatists to move their field work beyond Europe and North America, the fact remains that very much of significance has yet to be written on the civil law and common law as idiosyncratic rationalities or narrative strategies); and to militate in favour of an enlightened relativism (the idea that some laws would be inherently better than others without regard to context must be disavowed and ought, in fact, to be considered too offensive by comparatists to detain them for any length of time).
About the Author
Pierre Legrand. Professor of Law, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne. B.C.L. 1982, McGill; LL.B. 1982, McGill; D.E.A. 1985, Panthéon-Sorbonne; M. Litt. 1986, Oxford; Ph.D. 1993, Lancaster; Ph.D. 2000, Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Citation
75 Tul. L. Rev. 1033 (2001)