Comparative law
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Template:Cleanup-date Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law of different countries. more generally, of the different legal systems, including the common law family, the civil law family, the socialist law, the Islamic law family and the Asian law family. It includes the description and analysis of foreign legal systems, even where no explicit comparison is undertaken. The importance of comparative law has increased enormously in the present age of internationalism, economic globalisation and democratisation.
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Purpose of Comparative Law
Comparative law is an academic study of separate legal systems, each one analysed in its constitutive elements, how these differ in the different systems, and how these elements are combined into a system.
Several disciplines have developed as separate branches of comparative law, including comparative constitutional law, comparative administrative law, comparative civil law (in the sense of the law of torts, delicts, contracts and obligations), comparative commercial law (in the sense of business organisations and trade), and comparative criminal law. These can in themselves be conducted as micro- or macro-comparative studies, i.e. detailed comparisons of two countries, or broad-ranging studies of several countries. Comparative civil law studies, for instance, show how the law of private relations is organised, interpreted and used in different systems or countries.
Relationship with Other Legal Fields of Study
Comparative law is different from the fields of general jurisprudence (legal theory), international law, including both public international law and private international law (also known as conflict of laws).
Despite the differences between comparative law and these other legal fields, comparative helps inform all of these areas of normativity. For example, comparative law can help international legal institutions, such as those of the United Nations System, in analyzing the laws of different countries regarding their treaty obligations. Comparative law would be applicable to private international law when developing an approach to interpretation in a conflicts analysis. Comparative may contribute to legal theory by creating categories and concepts of general application. Comparative law may also provide insights into the problem of legal transplants, i.e. the transplanting of law and legal institutions from one system to another.
Additional Importance of Comparative Law
Comparative law is a very important discipline in communication between legal systems. It may provide the basis for the production of bilingual dictionaries that include the information necessary to make legal communication across borders successful. It also helps mutual understanding and the dispelling of prejudice and misinterpretation.
See Also
- Legal systems of the world (Includes Links to Legal Systems of Specific Countries)