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Glenn, H. Patrick --- "Aims of Comparative Law" [2006] ELECD 155; in Smits, M. Jan (ed), "Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law

Editor(s): Smits, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420130

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Aims of Comparative Law

Author(s): Glenn, H. Patrick

Number of pages: 9

Extract:

4 Aims of comparative law*
H. Patrick Glenn


1 Introduction
The idea that comparative law must have a specific aim or aims became
widespread through the 19th and 20th centuries, as comparative law itself
came to be recognized as a specific discipline. The idea assumes that com-
parative law is distinct from law itself, or subsidiary to it, and requires jus-
tification which law in its entirety would not. Today, however, comparative
legal reasoning is increasingly evident in almost all dimensions of the prac-
tice and study of law, such that the aims of comparative law are increasingly
difficult to state within a small compass. Comparative law is increasingly
integrated into law itself, as a fundamental technique and means of support.
The argument has thus already been made that comparative law should dis-
appear as an autonomous subject (Reimann, 1996) or at least be seen as an
integral dimension of all forms of legal endeavour (Glenn, 1999).
These different attitudes towards the comparing of laws, and the aims of
doing so, have been evident throughout legal history. Greek lawyers used
the law of other Greek city-states to decide cases and the process of com-
parison was here no different from that of comparing one internal norm to
another in the decision-making process. Aristotle, however, surveyed the
constitutions of the then known world with a view to improvement or per-
fection, and the use of comparative law as a subsidiary instrument of law
reform is here evident. In the ...