Comparative law beyond post-modernism

International and Comparative Law Quarterly

Volumn 49, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 800-834

  Peters, Anne ^a   Schwenke, Heiner ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KIEL   (Germany)

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EID: 85014665531     PISSN: 00205893     EISSN: 14716895     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020589300064666     Document Type: Article

References (239)

1. David Kennedy, “New Approaches to Comparative Law: Comparativism and International Governance”, (1997) Utah L.Rev. 545 at p.548.
2. Francis Snyder, “Governing Economic Globalisation: Global Legal Pluralism and European Law”, (1999) 5 Eur.LJ. 334–374.
3. Gunter Frankenberg, “Stranger than Paradise: Identity & Politics in Comparative Law”, (1997) Utah LRev. 259 at p.265
4. see also Jonathan Hill, “Comparative Law, Law Reform, and Legal Theory”, (1989) 9 Oxford J. Leg.Stud. 101 at p.113: “[Comparative law in its ‘applied version’… is faced by very serious, if not insoluble theoretical problems”.
5. Seminal Günter Frankenberg, “Critical Comparisons: Re-thinking Comparative Law”, (1985) 26 Harv.lnt'l L.J. 411–455
6. see also Nathaniel Berman, “Aftershocks: Exoticization, Normalization, and the Hermeneutic Compulsion” (1997) Utah LRev. 281 at p.281.
7. See the Symposium “New Approaches to Comparative Law”, held at the Utah Law School in October 1996, papers published in (1997) Utah LRev. 259 el seq.
8. Vivian Grosswald Cmrran, “Cultural Immersion, Difference and Categories in U.S. Comparative Law”, (1998) 46 AmJ.Comp.L 43, esp. at pp.50–54.
9. Berman AmJ.Comp.L n.4 at p.283: “there is no safe anchor, only engagement” {idem).
10. Annelise Riles, “Wigmore's Treasure Box: Comparative Law in the Era of Information”, (1999) 40 Harv.lnt'l L.R. 221 at pp.246–250. Riles paints a picture of currently three communities of comparative law (“traditional” comparative lawyers, “new approaches”, and specialists in particular bodies of non-western law), arguing that the three approaches are not so divergent as their proponents imagine because all scholars share the same passion for looking beyond and understanding differences.
11. Idem at pp.221–283.
12. Nora Demleitner, “Challenge, Opportunity and Risk: An Era of Change in Comparative Law”, (1998) 46 AmJ.Comp.L 647 at p.648. Demleitner identifies three groups in the US-American academy: the establishment, the comparative law and economics group, and the critical “Utah” group.
13. Explicitly post-modernist however, Janet E. Ainsworth, “Categories and Culture: On the ‘Rectification of Names’ in Comparative Law”, (1996) 82 Cornell LR. 19 at pp.24–25.
14. Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne, 4th ed. (1993) at pp.4–7
15. sec also Elizabeth Deed Ermarth, “Postmodernism”, in Edward Craig (Ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 7 (1998), 587–590 with further references.
16. We borrow this term from Karl Popper. See Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework: In defence of Science and Rationality (1994).
17. Grosswald Curran The Myth of the Framework: In defence of Science and Rationality n.6 at p.45.
18. Michael Stolleis, Nationalitát und InterNationalitát: Rechtsvcrgleichung im öffentlichen Recht da 19. Jahrhunderts (1998) at pp.7–8.
19. Idem at p.10.
20. The historicist drive of 19th century comparative scholarship was so pervasive that even in 1903 Frederick Pollock wrote: “It makes no great difference whether we speak of historical jurisprudence or of comparative jurisprudence, or, as the Germans seem inclined to do, of the general history of law.” Frederick Pollock, “The History of Comparative Jurisprudence”, (1903) 5 Journal Soc.Comp.Leg. 2nd ser. 74 at p.76.
21. Eduard Gans, Das Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwickclung: Eine Abhandlung der Universalrechtsgeschichte (1824) at p.XXXIX.
22. See within the same–Hegelian– paradigm Joseph Unger, Die Ehe in ihrer welthislorischen Entwicklung: Ein Beilrag zur Philosophic der Geschichle (1850). Translation, here and in following references to German sources by Anne Peters.
23. Joseph Kohler, Einleitung in die vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft (1885).
24. Wolfgang Gast, “Historischer Optimismus: Die juristische Weltsicht Josef Kohlers”, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft 85 (1985) 1.
25. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, (1848) Book III, Chap. XVII, § 5.
26. Erich Rothackcr, “Die vergleichende Methode in den Geisteswissenschaften”, (1957) 60 Zeiuchrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft 13 at p.17.
27. Franz Bemhöft, “Ueber Zweck und Mittel der vergleichenden Rechtswissenschaft”, (1878) 1 Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft 1 at pp.36–37.
28. “[C]omparative-ethnological research seeks to acquire knowledge of the causes of the facts of the life of peoples by assembling identical or similar phenomena, wherever they appear on earth and by drawing conclusions about identical or similar causes.” Albert Hermann Post, Bausteine für eine allgemeine Rechtswissenschaft auf vergleichend-ethno-logischer Basis (1880), Vorrede, citations at pp.12–13.
29. Other important works of this school are idem, Einleitung in das Studium der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz (1886)
30. Henry Maine, Ancient Law, 3d ed. (1866).
31. Albert Hermann Post, Die Crundlagen des Rectus und die Crundzüge seiner Entwicklungsgeschichte: Leitgedanken für den Aufbau einer allgemeinen Rechtswissenschaft auf sociologischer Basis (1884) at p.XI.
32. Wilhelm Dilthey, “Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissen-schaften”, in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VII (4 ed. 1965) (orig. 1910) 77 at p.99.
33. Charles de Secondat Montesqieu, De i'Esprit des his (1748), book I, chap. 3.
34. See Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (1840), p.8: “Where we first find documented history, the civil law has already a determinate character, peculiar to the people, just as have their language, manners, constitution.” Or elsewhere: “If we ask further for the subject in which and for which positive law has its existence, we find this is the people. Positive law lives in the common consciousness of the people, and we therefore have to call it people's law (Volksrecht). … [I]t is the spirit of the people (Volksgeist), living and working in all the individuals together, which creates the positive law …”
35. (idem, System des heutigen römischen Rechls, Vol. I (1840) at p.14).
36. In retrospect, one of the pioneers of comparative law, Felix Meyer, said that in 1894, mainstream scholarship “bemoaned [the comparative discipline] as dilettantism and as Utopian project, looked pitifully down on it from the heights of Roman law as the beatific ratio scripta.” His address is reproduced in Karl von Lewinski, “Die Feier des zwanzig-jährigen Bestehens der Internationalen Vereinigung für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft und Volkswirtschaftslehre”, 9 (1914) Blatter für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft and Volkswirtschaftslehre Suppl. to issue 9,2–3.
37. Sec on the relationship of the historical school to comparative law Stolleis Blatter für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft and Volkswirtschaftslehre Suppl. to issue n.14 at p.24
38. Konrad Zweigert & Hein Kötz, Introduction to Comparative Law–The Framework (1969), (Tony Weir, trans., 3d ed. 1998) at $4 I
39. Elmar Wadle, Einhundert Jahre Rechtsvergleichende Geseltschaften in Deutschland (1994) at p.17.
40. Walther Hug, “The History of Comparative Law”, 45(1931/1932) Harv. Intl L.R. 1027 at p.1069–7
41. Zweigert & Kötz Harv. Intl L.R. n.30 at $4 III 3
42. Stolleis Harv. Intl L.R. n.14 at pp.12, 24.
43. Rudolph von Ihering, Der Geist des Römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung, Vol. I, 9th ed. (1955) (1st ed. 1852) at p.15. Ihering's complaint was justified to the extent that German lawyers in particular were preoccupied with their own country, because German unification was, to say the least, one of the most pressing subjects of the time. But this did not quite do justice to the discipline as a whole.
44. See for the comparatist mood Felix Meyer, speaking in 1914: “… today, when the’ intemationalisation of the law has made enormous progress, when no Act is passed without legal comparison and the global economic tendency is manifest in ever newly emerging societies and institutes” (Lewinski Der Geist des Römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung n.30 at p.3).
45. Seminal works were Josef Kohler, Deutsche! Patentrechl, Systematisch bearbeitet unter vergleichender Berücksichtigung des französischen Patentrechts (1878); idem (ed.). Das Recht des Markenschulzes mil Berücksichtigung ausländischer Gesetzgebungen und mil besonderer Riicksicht auf die englische, anglo-amerikanische, französische, belgische und italienische Jurisprudenz (1884/85).
46. Raymond Saleilles, “Conception et objet de la science juridique du droit comparé” in Procès verbaux et documents du Congrès international de droit comparé 1900. (1905–1907) Vol. I, 167 at p.173. He continues: “Le droit comparé’ cherche à définir le type idéal tout relatif qui se dégage de la comparaison des législations, de leur fonctionnement et de leurs résultats”.
47. See Pan. J. Zepos, “Die Bewegung zur Rechtsvereinheitlichung und das Schicksal der geltenden Zivilgesetzbücher”, (1966) 19 Revue héllenique de droit international 14 at pp.17–18.
48. Lewinski Revue héllenique de droit international n.30 at p.3.
49. Karl von Lewinski concluded his report on the celebration with the words: “May we succeed jointly to contribute continuously to our part of the proud edifice of science that links nations, in which in the future all nations shall reside peacefully next to each other.” (idem, at p.9).
50. “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 Revue héllenique de droit international n.35 at p.16).
51. Georg Friedrich Puchta, Cursus der Institutions, Vol. I (1841), esp. pp.95–108
52. Bernhard Windscheid, Lehrbuch des Pandektenrechts (3 volumes), 7th ed. (1891) (1st ed. 1862), esp. Vol. I, }24 (pp.59–60)
53. Rudolph von Ihering Lehrbuch des Pandektenrechts n.32, with the notorious phrase at p.40: “Notions are productive, they mate and generate new ones”.
54. See Ernst Rudolf Bierling, juristische Prinzipienlehre, Vol. I (1894, repr. 1961) at p.33 (expecting “little or no use” of comparative law).
55. Mary Ann Glendon, Abortion and Divorce in Western Laws (1987) at pp.3–4.
56. Rudolph von Ihering, Der Zweck im Recht, 2 Vols. (1877).
57. Philipp Heck, “Gcsetzesauslegung und Interessenjurisprudenz”, (1914) 112 Archiv für die civilistische Praxis 1˜318.
58. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881) at 1
59. “The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.” Idem, “The Path of the Law”, (1897) 10 Harv. Intl L.R. 457–478.
60. Roscoe Pound, “The Scope and Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence”, (1911) 24 Harv. Intl L.R. 591–619
61. (1911/1912)25 Harv. Intl L.R. 140–168,489–516.
62. Ernst Rabel, Aufgabe und Notwendigkeit der Rechtsvergleichung (1925) at p.4.
63. See, e.g., Max Rheinstein, Einführung in die Rechtsvergleichung. 2nd ed. (1987) at p.33.
64. Ernst Rabel, “Some Major Problems of Applied Comparative Law, especially in the Conflict of Law (summary)”, in Association of American Law Schools (ed.) Summarized Proceedings of the Institute in the Teaching of International and Comparative Law (1948) at p.111.
65. Max Rheinstein, “Teaching Comparative Law”,’(1938) 5 U.Chi.L.Rev. 615 at p.618.
66. Idem at pp.617–618.
67. W. J. Kamba, “Comparative Law: A Theoretical Framework”, (1974) 23 I.C.L.Q. 485 at p.517.
68. See Zweigert & Kötz I.C.L.Q. n 30 at pp.32–47.
69. Ugo Mattei, Comparative Law and Economics (1997).
70. See only René David & John E. C Brierley, Major Legal Systems in the World Today. 3d ed. (1985) at pp.4–6.
71. 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.” (Myres S. McDougal, “The Comparative Study of Law for Policy Purposes: Value Clarification as an Instrument of Democratic World Order”, in William Elliot Butler (Ed.) International Law in Comparative Perspective (1980) 191 at p.196).
72. Kaiser speaks of framing a “general theory of democratic-liberal constitutional law”. Joseph H. Kaiser, “Vergleichung im öffentlichen Recht”, (1964) 24 Zeitschrift für ausländisches Öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 391 at p399.
73. Zweigert & Kötz Zeitschrift für ausländisches Öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht n 30 at $4 I, admit that comparative legal studies with the objective of finding better solutions have an affinity to natural law speculations.
74. “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.” Rudolf B. Schlesinger/Hans W. Baade/Mirjan R. Damaska/ Peter E. Herzog, Comparative Law: Cases–Text–Materials. 5th ed. (1988) at pp.34–35,39.
75. Zweigert & Kötz Comparative Law: Cases–Text–Materials n.30 at p.34
76. but see much more cautiously Hein Kötz, “Absented von der Rcchtskreislehre?”, (1998) 6 Zeitschrift für europäisches Privatrecht 493–505 at pp.504–505 (limited value of the functional approach).
77. Critically Frankenberg (1985) Zeitschrift für europäisches Privatrecht 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.”
78. Roscoe Pound, “Comparative Law in Space and Time”, (1955) 4 AmJ.Comp.L 70 at p.72
79. similarly Rheinstein (1938) AmJ.Comp.L n.44 at p.619.
80. See, e.g., Michael King, “Comparing Legal Cultures in the Quest for Law's Identity”, in David Nelken (Ed.), Comparing Legal Cultures (1997) 119 at p.132.
81. Vincenzo Ferrari, “Socio-legal Concepts and Their Comparison”, in Else Oeyen (Ed.) Comparative Methodology (1990) 63 at p.69
82. Basil Markesinis (Ed.), The Gradual Convergence: Foreign Ideas, Foreign Influences, and English Law on the Eve of the 21st Century (1994)
83. Peter De Cruz, Comparative Law in a Changing World (1995) at pp. 477–489
84. Reinhard Zimmermann, “‘Common law’ und ‘civil law’, Amerika und Europa– zu diesem Band,” in Reinhard Zimmermann (Ed.), Amerikanische Rechtskultur und europdisches Privatrecht (1995) 1 at p.2
85. Kötz Amerikanische Rechtskultur und europdisches Privatrecht n.55 at pp.497–504.
86. The critical perspective on this issue is represented by Pierre Legrand, “European Systems are not Converging”, (1996) 45 I.C.L.Q. 52–81 (arguing that common and civil law systems are irreducibly different).
87. Arthur T. von Mehren, “An Academic Tradition for Comparative Law?”, (1971) 19 AmJ.Comp.L. 624 at p.625
88. see also Rolf Knieper, “Rechtsimperialismus?”, (1996) 29 Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik 64–67 (recommending inter-regional harmonisation and reliance on local traditions in post-communist societies)
89. critical towards the “ideology of convergence” also Hill Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik n.3 at p.110.
90. 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 Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik n.1 at p.554.
91. “[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 Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik n.4 at p.282 (emphasis added).
92. Grosswald Curran Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik n.6 at p.91
93. see in that sense also Pierce Legrand, “Sur l'analyse differentielle des juriscultures”, (1999) 51 Revue intemationale de droit compart 1053 at p.1062.
94. One of the seminal contributions was François Lyotard's La condition postmodeme: 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.
95. Frankenberg (1997) François Lyotard's La condition postmodeme: Rapport sur le savoir 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.
96. Frankenberg (1985) François Lyotard's La condition postmodeme: Rapport sur le savoir n.4 at p.411 (emphasis added).
97. Grosswald Curran François Lyotard's La condition postmodeme: Rapport sur le savoir n.6 at p.64.
98. Cf. Riles François Lyotard's La condition postmodeme: Rapport sur le savoir n.8 at p.248.
99. See as an example Jorge L. Esquirol, “The Fictions of Latin American Law (Part I),” (1997) Utah L. Rev. 425, analysing Rend David's comparative work on Latin American Law.
100. Berman Utah L. Rev. n.4 at p.281.
101. See also Günter Frankenberg (1997) Utah L. Rev. n.3.
102. Kennedy Utah L. Rev. n.1 at p.633.
103. See also, idem at p.632, and generally pp.606–637 on the “Politics” and Governance Projects of Comparative Law.
104. Catherine Rogers, “Gulliver's Troubled Travels, or The Conundrum of Comparative Law”, (1998) 67 George Washington LRev. 149 at pp.161–162.
105. See also Grosswald Curran George Washington LRev. n.6 at p.67 on “underlying, sometimes irreconcilable, differences among legal systems”
106. also Legrand (1999) George Washington LRev. n.62 at p.1056.
107. See, e.g., Brenda Crossman, “Turning the Gaze Back on Itself: Comparative Law, Feminist Legal Studies, and the Postcolonial Project”, (1997) Utah LRev. 525 at pp.526–527 and 537
108. Hartmut Rosa, “Lebensformen vergleichen und verstehen. Eine Theorie der dimensionalen Kommensurabilit$t von Kontexten und Kulturen”, (1999) 1 Handlung, Kultur, Interpretation: Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften 10 at p.24.
109. 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 Handlung, Kultur, Interpretation: Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften n.1 at p.569).
110. 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 (Gerhard Schurz, The ls-Ought Problem: An Investigation in Philosophical Logic (1997) at p.279).
111. 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.
112. See in detail on framework-relativism infra pp.822–824.
113. See Elmar Holenstein, Menschliches Selbstverständnis, Ichbewuβtsein, Intersubjektive Verantwortung, Interkulturelle Verständigung (1985) at pp.104–180.
114. See also Thierry Lenain, “Understanding the Past: History as an Intercultural Process”, in Notker Schneider, Ram A. Mall & Dieter Lohrnar (Eds.), Einheit und Vielfalt: Das Verstehen der Kulturen (1998), 145–154, 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.”
115. Popper 1994 Einheit und Vielfalt: Das Verstehen der Kulturen 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.
116. See, e.g., references to Kuhn in Ainsworth Einheit und Vielfalt: Das Verstehen der Kulturen n.10 at p.30
117. or in Rosa Einheit und Vielfalt: Das Verstehen der Kulturen n.72 at pp. 12–17.
118. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (3rd Ed. 1996) at pp.198–204.
119. Ermarth The Structure of Scientific Revolutions n.11 at p.588.
120. A paradigmatic example is Mitchel De S.-O.L'E. Lasser, “Comparative Law and Comparative Literature: A Project in Progress”, (1997) Utah L.Rev. 472–524, 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)
121. see also the extensive footnote in Grosswald Curran Utah L.Rev. n.6 at pp.49 n.12 and 54–59 (“Comparative Law as a Phenomenon of Translation”).
122. Benjamin Lee Whorf, “An American Indian Model of the Universe”, Manuscript approx. 1936, in John B. Carroll (Ed.) Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) 57, at pp.57–58.
123. Ekkehart Malotki, Hopi Field Notes (1980)
124. quoted in idem, Hopi time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal Aspects in the Hopi Language (1983) at p.vi.
125. 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 Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue (1984)
126. also Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, 1989, Chapter 1, entitled “Inescapable Frameworks”, pp.3–24.
127. But see Karl-Otto Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, Vol II: Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft (1973), esp. 400, 420–425
128. Jürgen Habermas, “Diskur-sethik–Notizen zu einem Begründungsprogramm”, in idem, Moralbewuβtsein und kom-munikatives Handeln (1983), 53, at p.105
129. Jürgen Habermas, “Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik”, in idem, Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik, 2nd ed. (1992), 119, at p.195 for the assertion that engaging in a discourse necessarily implies recognition of some universal norms.
130. See, e.g., Lung Jingtai, “Wo Respckt zu Gleichgültigkeit wird”, (1998) No. 78,2 April, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 39.
131. See for further arguments against moral cultural relativism and for a “deliberative universalism” Amy Gutmann, “The Challenge of Multiculturalism”, (1993) 22 Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs 171–206.
132. “The questions comparativists ask will reflect their own perceptual prisms and affect their receptivity to data from observed legal cultures”. Grosswald Curran Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs n.6 at p.58.
133. “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 Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs n.3 at p.107.
134. Frankcnberg (1985) Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs n.4 at p.414.
135. Demleitner Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs n.9 at p.654
136. Grosswald Curran Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs n.6 at pp.48–49 (distortion inevitably prevails in the comparative act).
137. Grosswald Curran Political Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs 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.
138. 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.
139. Crossman The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet n.72 at p.526.
140. Pierre Schlag, “Normativity and the Politics of Form”, (1991) 139 U. Pennsylvania L.R. 801 at pp.808 and 812.
141. Roman Tokarczyk, “Some Considerations on Comparative Law”, (1990) 59 Revista Jurldica Universidad de Puerto Rico 951 at p.959.
142. Ainsworth Revista Jurldica Universidad de Puerto Rico n.10 at p.30”
143. see also Legrand (1999) Revista Jurldica Universidad de Puerto Rico n.62 at pp.1054,1057–58.
144. Joachim Matthes, “The Operation Called ‘Vergleichen’”, in idem (Ed.), Zwischen den Kulluren? Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem des Kulturvergleichs (1982) 75 at p.83.
145. See, e.g., Frankenberg (1997) Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem des Kulturvergleichs n.3 at p.263.
146. Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem des Kulturvergleichs pp.820–821.
147. See Chaim Perelman & Louise Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric- A Treatise on Argumentation (1969) (John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver transl.) (orig. 1958) at pp.111–112.
148. 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 Michel Foucault, Dispositive der Macht: Über Sexualitäl, Wissen und Wahrheit (1978) 21–74.
149. Cf. Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Réponse à la question: Qu'est-ce que le postmoderne?,” (1982) Vol. 37, No. 419 Critique: revue générale dés publications françaises el étrangères 357
150. German transl.: “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist postmodern?,” in Peter Engelmann (Ed.), Postmoderne und Dekonstruktion (1990) 33 at pp.48–49 on unrepresentability and difference
151. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Un enjeu des uttes des femmes (1976)
152. German translation: “Ein Einsatz in den Kämpfen der Frauen”, in idem, Das Patchwork der Minderheiten (1977) 52–72.
153. Consequently, the new vision of comparative law has its “focus on difference” (Grosswald Curran Das Patchwork der Minderheiten n.6 at p.83).
154. See, e.g., Schlag Das Patchwork der Minderheiten n.96 at pp.803–804.
155. 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 lnt'l L. 1 at p.35.
156. 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) Austral. Yearbook lnt'l L. n.3 at p.266.
157. Berman advises critical comparatists to “refuse the homogenizing and essenlializing gestures of the tradition: instead, show how all cultural formations are split, hybrid, and embedded in contexts of power”. (Berman Austral. Yearbook lnt'l L. n.4 at p.281).
158. Matthes Austral. Yearbook lnt'l L. n.99, at p.84.
159. Jürgen Straub, Handlung, Interpretation, Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie (1999) at p.6.
160. Matthes Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie n.99 at pp.81–82.
161. See Frankenberg (1997)Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie n.3 at p.263 on the mainstreamer as a “hegemonic self, a representative of legal paternalism”.
162. Berman Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie n.4 at p.282.
163. See idem, passim; Kennedy Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie n.1 at p.618
164. Esquirol Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie n.68 at p.470, on comparatists' “fiction of Europeanness” of Latin American Law.
165. Frankenberg (1997) Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie n.3 at p.261.
166. See similarly Hill Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie n.3 at pp.109–110 on the pervasive influence of the political climate of the time on comparative scholarship.
167. Esquirol Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaft-lichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie 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).
168. Frances Olsen, “The Drama of Comparative Law”, (1997) Utah L.Rev. 275 at p.278. “Comparativists should recognize the power relations involved” (idem).
169. Kennedy Utah L.Rev. n.1 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 an ongoing international regime. “The comparativist, in this sense, works as an ideologist for the global system of government”, idem at p.636.
170. Hill Utah L.Rev. n.3 at p.106, also p.107.
171. “[T]he comparative law agenda is largely conditioned by an uncritical attitude towards fundamental issues of social and economic organization.” Hill Utah L.Rev. n.3 at p. 106.
172. Frankenbcrg (1997) Utah L.Rev. n.3 at p.263.
173. Idem at pp.263–265.
174. Esquirol Utah L.Rev. n.68 at p.437 on René David's writing on Latin America.
175. Frankenberg (1985) Utah L.Rev. n.4 at p.421.
176. Frankenberg (1997) Utah L.Rev. n.3 at pp.265–266.
177. Idem at p.273.
178. Idem at p.262.
179. See, e.g., Grosswald Curran Idem n.6 at p.48.
180. Jorge Louis Borges, “Die analytische Sprache John Wilkins'” in idem, Das Eine und die Vielen: Essays zur Literatur (1966) 209 at p.212 (first published in Historia de la eternidad, 1953).
181. Michel Foucault, Les mots el Its choses (1966) (p.17 of the German translation, Die Ordnung der Dinge, 14th ed. 1997).
182. See for a moderate criticism of the doctrine of legal families Kötz Die Ordnung der Dinge n.55 at pp.493–505
183. for a new taxonomy Ugo Mattei (1997) 45 AmJ.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).
184. Frankenberg (1985) AmJ.Comp.L. n.4 at p.421.
185. Frankenberg (1997) AmJ.Comp.L. n.3 at p.267.
186. Grosswald Curran AmJ.Comp.L. n.6 at p.45.
187. See Grosswald Curran AmJ.Comp.L. n.6 at p.59, whose “immersion approach” to comparative law “suggests that law does not have a life of its own”.
188. See also French AmJ.Comp.L. n.93 at pp.xiii and 57.
189. See Umberto Eco, La ricerca delta lingua perfetta netla cultura europea (4th ed. 1993) at p.222
190. Jingtai La ricerca delta lingua perfetta netla cultura europea n.89.
191. Frankenberg (1997) Jingtai La ricerca delta lingua perfetta netla cultura europea n.3 at p.263
192. see already Hill Jingtai La ricerca delta lingua perfetta netla cultura europea n.3 at p.106.
193. Grosswald Curran Jingtai La ricerca delta lingua perfetta netla cultura europea n.6 at p.61.
194. George P. Fletcher, “The Universal and the Particular in Legal Discourse”, (1987) Brigham Young University L.R. 335 at p.350.
195. Kennedy Brigham Young University L.R. n.1 at p.590 n.76.
196. Grosswald Curran Brigham Young University L.R. n.6 at pp.53, 66–78, quotation at p.66 n.76.
197. Hill Brigham Young University L.R. n.3 at p.104.
198. See also Kennedy Brigham Young University L.R. n.1 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).
199. Hill Brigham Young University L.R. n.3 at p.107.
200. This objection has been forcefully raised by Alan Watson, Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law, 2d ed. (1993), esp. at pp. 107–118. 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.
201. Glendon Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law n.40 at pp.8–9.
202. 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 Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law n.1 39 at pp.335–351.
203. Frankenberg (1985) Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law n.4 at p.437
204. D. Kokkini-Iatridou, “Some Methodological Aspects of Comparative Law”, (1986) 33 N.I.L.R 143 at p.160.
205. Watson N.I.L.R n.142 at p.4
206. Hill N.I.L.R n.3 at p. 198
207. see Grosswald Curran N.I.L.R n.6 at p.71 n.93 for an example.
208. McDougal N.I.L.R n.53 at p.219.
209. See for a great example of scholarship French N.I.L.R n.94 (on the methodological aspects mentioned here at pp.16,59).
210. See, e.g., Hill N.I.L.R n.3 at p.115.
211. See only Paolo Carozza, “Continuity and Rupture in New Approaches to Comparative Law”, (1997) Utah L.Rev. 657 at p.663
212. Mathias Reimann, “Stepping out of the European Shadow: Why Comparative Law in the United States Must Develop Its Own Agenda”, (1998) 46 AmJ.Comp.L 637 at p.645.
213. According to Frankenberg (1997) AmJ.Comp.L n.3 at p.270, comparative law needs u[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”
214. (Crossman AmJ.Comp.L n.72 at p.537).
215. See only Schlesinger et al. AmJ.Comp.L 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”.
216. Mary Ann Glendon, “Comparative Law as Shock Treatment: A Tribute to Jacob W. F. Sundberg”, in Erik Nerep & Wiweka Warnling-Nerep (Eds.), Sänryck ur: Festskrift till Jacob W. F. Sundberg (1993) 69 at p.69.
217. Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1950) at p.403.
218. See with regard to comparative law Ernst Rabel, “Deutsches und amerikanisches Recht”, (1951) 16 Zeitschrifi für ausländisches und Internationales Privatrecht (RabelsZ) 340 at p.359: “What remains of the coloring of the picture by origin and education of the scholar, will be corrected by international co-operation.”
219. Popper calls this “the idea of mutual rational control by critical discussion”. Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1992) at p.44 n.1.
220. 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 The Logic of Scientific Discovery 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.
221. See on the significance of co-operation in science Henry H. Bauer, Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method (1992) at pp.43–62 et passim.
222. “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 Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method n.142 at p.10).
223. Ainsworth Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method n.10 at p.28.
224. Already Pierre Lepaulle, “The Function of Comparative Law”, (1921–1922) 35 Harv.LRev. 838 at p.853: “First, it must be clear that a comparison restricted to one legal phenomenon in two countries is unscientific and misleading.
225. 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, Harv.LRev 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.”
226. See also Rothacker, Harv.LRev. 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”
227. Berman, Harv.LRev. n.4 at pp.284–285.
228. See already in the eighties Holenstein Harv.LRev. n.76
229. most recently the focus section “Interkulturelle Kompetenz und Hermeneutik” in (1999) 47 Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 407–477
230. contributions by Hans Julius Schneider, Joachim Matthes, Axel Horstmann, J¨rgen Straub/Shingo Shimada; Rosa Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie n.72 at pp. 10–42.
231. See also Elmar Holenstein, “Intra- und interkulturelle Hermeneutik”, in idem, Kulturphilosophische Perspektiven (1998) 257–287
232. Heinz Kimmerle & Franz M. Wimmcr (Eds.), Philosophy and Democracy in Intcrcultural Perspective 1997
233. Notker Schneider, Ram A. Mall & Dieter Lohmar (Eds.), Einheit und Vielfalt: Das Verstehen der Kulturen (1998).
234. Friedrich Schleiermacher, “Hermeneutik”, in idem, Schriften (Andreas Arndt Ed., 1996), pp.945–991 (orig. 1819)
235. Wilhelm Dilthey, “Plan der Forsetzung zum Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaftcn”, in idem, Gesammelie Schriften, Vol. VII (4th ed. 1965), 189, at 216–220
236. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (15th ed. 1976), $531–32 (pp.142–153) (orig. 1927)
237. Hans Georg-Gadamer, “Hermeneutik I: Wahrheit und Meth-ode”, in idem, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1 (6th ed. 1990) (orig. 1960).
238. Axel Horstmann, “Interkulturelle Hermeneutik: Einc neue Theorie des Verste-hens?,” (1999) 47 Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophic 427 at p.438.
239. Kennedy Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophic n.1, at pp.590 n.76 and 591.