Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

McEvoy, Sebastian --- "Descriptive and Purposive Categories of Comparative Law" [2012] ELECD 583; in Monateri, Giuseppe Pier (ed), "Methods of Comparative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Methods of Comparative Law

Editor(s): Monateri, Giuseppe Pier

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802529

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Descriptive and Purposive Categories of Comparative Law

Author(s): McEvoy, Sebastian

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

7. Descriptive and purposive categories of
comparative law
Sebastian McEvoy



INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this book on the methods of comparative law is to propose an inter-
disciplinary understanding of comparative law whereas comparative law usually consists
in comparing the law in two or more legal systems on a particular issue.
Thus briefed on the overall purpose, the present author, presumably like the others, was
given the freedom to write on whichever subject he preferred, but asked to focus on what
he `did' and on what he `expected to reach' when he compared. In 2010, the organizers of a
conference on law and literature also requested participants to stop and think about their
practice.1 This recalls conceptual art, for which conception matters more than execution.
It has therefore appeared appropriate to submit a chapter in `conceptual research', on
(A) the descriptive and (B) the purposive categories of comparative law.
The categories proposed in (A) derive from the possible terms of comparison rather than
from actual comparisons as found in books and articles. The word `comparison' in (A)
merely means something like `bringing together' or `relating', for instance English and
French law, present and past law, law and linguistics, law and economics, and so on.
(B) presents the assimilation or distinguishing of terms as one operation among others.
Comparative law can also explain the similarities or differences, it can make one term the
cause of the other, it can criticize the differences, etc.
The categorization has the effect of redefining ...