Mathias Siems, Comparative Law
| Published date | 01 January 2016 |
| Author | |
| Date | 01 January 2016 |
| Pages | 109-111 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2016.0332 |
With the increasing flow of people, services and goods around the world, the development of the internet and the threats that nuclear power, terrorism, and global warming represent for planet earth, twenty-first century scholars are exploring concepts such as globalisation, transnational law, regulation, and pluralism in an attempt to break new ground. The state does not regulate the behaviour of economic actors, social forces, or citizens/consumers entirely through domestic law. Comparative lawyers have a key role to play in identifying similarities and differences between countries, providing understanding of “what works” and “what is right”. Mathias Siems' book sets off to explore the methods available to a comparative lawyer in such an inquiry.
This book takes the reader through four stages, starting with past approaches in comparative law (part I:
The first theme of this work is to relate, in an accessible and logical account, the key debates waged in comparative law over the last forty years. The book starts with a summary of traditional comparative law based on the functional method and the mapping of the world into legal families. It goes on to discuss the limits of these approaches and to explore how other approaches provide enrichment by leading to a more nuanced understanding of similarities and differences, taking into account the importance of language, social, political or economic contexts, and the international trends within which the law operates.
In this survey each section follows a rigorous structure in which the topic is first explained in general terms, before the various issues and the main authors are discussed in detail, and a brief critical assessment is made of the contribution and limits of each approach for comparative law research. This succeeds in...
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