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Husa, Jaakko --- "Legal Families" [2006] ELECD 186; 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 35

Section Title: Legal Families

Author(s): Husa, Jaakko

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

35 Legal families*
Jaakko Husa


1 Classifying the legal systems of the world
Even though there is no clear-cut definition of `legal family', it may be
regarded as a conceptual and methodological device of the comparative
lawyer, not sociologist of law or legal theoretician, but lawyer. It has been
suggested that, as an academic field, comparative law may be divided into
two main areas of research, albeit this division is flexible as to its nature.
There is macro-comparative law and micro-comparative law. Customarily
the micro-comparison deals with specific legal rules, cases and institutions
that are conceived from a point of view of actual problems or particular legal
conflicts of interests, whereas the macro-comparison normally focuses on
larger-scale themes and questions. Systematization, grouping and classifica-
tion of the legal systems of the world lie at the heart of macro-comparative
law: it deals with comparison of entire legal systems, not specific small-scale
problems of a legal nature (Zweigert and Kötz, 1998; Örücü, 2004b).
Both main areas are seeking to place comparable elements of two or more
legal systems up against each other in order to learn about the relevant
differences and similarities between them. The legal families approach,
specifically, and macro-comparative law, in general, are seeking to answer
but one basic question: can the great number of legal systems of the world
be divided into few large entities, i.e., families, groups, spheres or equivalent?
In the context of comparative law, ...