History of comparative law

Comparative Legal History is an international and comparative review of law and history. Articles will explore both 'internal' legal history (doctrinal and disciplinary developments in the law) and 'external' legal history (legal ideas and institutions in wider contexts).

Comparative legal history is the study of law in two or more different places or at different times. As a discipline, it emerged between 1930 and 1960 in response to legal formalism, and builds on scattered uses of legal-historical comparison since antiquity. It uses the techniques of legal history and comparative law.

Historical development of comparative law The expression comparative law is a modern one, first used in the 19th century when it became clear that the comparison of legal institutions deserved a systematic approach, in order to increase understanding of foreign cultures and to further legal progress.

The origins of modern Comparative Law can be traced back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1667 in his Latin-language book Nova Methodus Discendae Docendaeque Iurisprudentiae (New Methods of Studying and Teaching Jurisprudence).

How does Comparative Law contribute to legal theory?

Comparative law may contribute to legal theory by creating categories and concepts of general application.
Comparative law may also provide insights into the question of legal transplants, i.e. the transplanting of law and legal institutions from one system to another.

What is the difference between a legal historian and a comparative lawyer?

Legal historians have sometimes studied the law of one place and time while disregarding that of others

Comparative lawyers have sometimes compared the law of different jurisdictions while ignoring the historical reasons they are alike or unlike

The consequences have been unfortunate

Where did comparative law come from?

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