Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law of different countries. More specifically, it involves study of the different legal systems in existence in the world, including the common law, the civil law, socialist law, Islamic law, Hindu law, and Chinese law. It includes the description and analysis of foreign legal systems, even where no explicit comparison is undertaken. The importance of comparative law has increased enormously in the present age of internationalism, economic globalisation and democratisation.

History[link]

The birth of modern comparative law is generally attributed to Europe in the eighteenth century. However, prior to that, legal scholars (forerunners of today's comparativists and international lawyers) practiced comparative method. In Russian legal history, for instance, comparative method dates back to the sixteenth century.^[1]

Montesquieu[link]

According to the prevalent view, Montesquieu is regarded as the 'father' of comparative law. His comparative approach is obvious in the following excerpt from Chapter III of Book I of what many consider to be his masterpiece, De l'esprit des lois:^[2]

[The political and civil laws of each nation] should be adapted in such a manner to the people for whom they are framed that it should be a great chance if those of one nation suit another. They should be in relation to the nature and principle of each government; whether they form it, as may be said of politic laws; or whether they support it, as in the case of civil institutions. They should be in relation to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives, whether husbandmen, huntsmen, or shepherds: they should have relation to the degree of liberty which the constitution will bear; to the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, numbers, commerce, manners, and customs.

Also, in Chapter XI (entitled 'How to compare two different Systems of Laws') of Book XXIX he advises that "to determine which of those systems [i.e. the French and English systems for the punishment of false witnesses] is most agreeable to reason, we must take them each as a whole and compare them in their entirety." Yet another excerpt where Montesqieu's comparative approach is evident is the following one from Chapter XIII of Book XXIX:

As the civil laws depend on the political institutions, because they are made for the same society, whenever there is a design of adopting the civil law of another nation, it would be proper to examine beforehand whether they have both the same institutions and the same political law.

Birth as a discipline in the U.S.[link]

Comparative law in the US was brought by a legal scholar fleeing persecution in Germany, Rudolf Schlesinger. Schlesinger eventually became professor of comparative law at Cornell Law School helping to spread the discipline throughout the US.

Purpose[link]

Comparative law is an academic study of separate legal systems, each one analysed in its constitutive elements; how they differ in the different legal systems, and how their elements combine into a system.

Several disciplines have developed as separate branches of comparative law, including comparative constitutional law, comparative administrative law, comparative civil law (in the sense of the law of torts, delicts, contracts and obligations), comparative commercial law (in the sense of business organisations and trade), and comparative criminal law. Studies of these specific areas may be viewed as micro- or macro-comparative legal analysis, i.e. detailed comparisons of two countries, or broad-ranging studies of several countries. Comparative civil law studies, for instance, show how the law of private relations is organised, interpreted and used in different systems or countries. It appears today the principal purposes of comparative law are:

• to attain a deeper knowledge of the legal systems in effect
• to perfect the legal systems in effect
• possibly, to contribute to a unification of legal systems, of a smaller or larger scale (cf. for instance, the UNIDROIT initiative)

Importance[link]

Comparative law is a very important discipline in communication between legal systems. It may provide the basis for the production of bilingual dictionaries that include the information necessary to make legal communication across borders successful. It also helps mutual understanding and the dispelling of prejudice and misinterpretation. In this globalising world, comparative law is important for it provides a platform for intellectual exchange in terms of law and it cultivates a culture of understanding in a diverse world. Furthermore, comparative law helps in broadening horizons for law reformers and legislators around the world. It can also be helpful in international relations in shaping foreign policies.

Relationship with other legal subjects[link]

Comparative law is different from the fields of general jurisprudence (legal theory), international law, including both public international law and private international law (also known as conflict of laws).

Despite the differences between comparative law and these other legal fields, comparative law helps inform all of these areas of normativity. For example, comparative law can help international legal institutions, such as those of the United Nations System, in analyzing the laws of different countries regarding their treaty obligations. Comparative law would be applicable to private international law when developing an approach to interpretation in a conflicts analysis. 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. The notion of legal transplants was coined by Alan Watson, one of the world's renowned legal scholars specializing in comparative law.

Also, the usefulness of comparative law for the sociology of law (and vice versa) is very large. The comparative study of the various legal systems may show how different legal regulations for the same problem function in practice. Conversely, sociology of law may help comparative law answer questions, such as: How do regulations in different legal systems really function in the respective societies? Are certain legal rules comparable? How do the similarities and differences between legal systems get explained?

Classifications of legal systems[link]

Arminjon, Nolde, and Wolff[link]

Arminjon, Nolde, and Wolff^[3] believed that, for purposes of classifying the (then) contemporary legal systems of the world, it was required that those systems per se get studied, irrespective of external factors, such as geographical ones. They proposed the classification of legal system into seven groups, or so-called 'families', in particular the

• French group, under which they also included the countries that codified their law either in 19th or in the first half of the 20th century, using the Napoleonic code civil of year 1804 as a model; this includes countries and jurisdictions such as Italy, Portugal, Spain, Louisiana, states of South America (such as Brazil), Quebec, Santa Lucia, Romania, the Ionian Islands, Egypt, and Lebanon
• German group
• Scandinavian group (comprising the laws of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland)
• English group (incl. England, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand inter alia)
• Russian group
• Islamic group (used in the Muslim world)
• Hindu group

David[link]

David^[4] proposed the classification of legal systems, according to the different ideology inspiring each one, into five groups or families:

• Western Laws, a group subdivided into the:
  • Romano-Germanic subgroup (comprising those legal systems where legal science was formulated according to Roman Law - see also Civil law (legal system))
  • Anglo-Saxon subgroup
• Soviet Law
• Muslim Law
• Hindu Law
• Chinese Law

Especially with respect to the aggregating by David of the Romano-Germanic and Anglo-Saxon Laws into a single family, David argued that the antithesis between the Anglo-Saxon Laws and Romano-German Laws, is of a technical rather than of an ideological nature. Of a different kind is, for instance, the antithesis between (say) the Italian and the American Law, and of a different kind that between the Soviet, Muslim, Hindu, or Chinese Law. According to David, the Romano-Germanic legal systems included those countries where legal science was formulated according to Roman Law, whereas common law countries are those where law was created from the judges. The characteristics that he believed uniquely differentiate the Western legal family from the other four are

• liberal democracy
• capitalist economy
• Christian religion

Zweigert and Kötz[link]

Zweigert and Kötz^[5] propose a different, multidimensional methodology for categorizing laws, i.e. for ordering families of laws. They maintain that, to determine such families, five criteria should be taken into account, in particular: the historical background, the characteristic way of thought, the different institutions, the recognized sources of law, and the dominant ideology. Using the aforementioned criteria, they classify the legal systems of the world into six families:

• Roman family
• German family
• Common law family
• Nordic family
• Family of the laws of the Far East (China and Japan)
• Religious family (Muslim and Hindu law)

Professional associations[link]

• International Academy of Comparative Law
• American Society of Comparative Law

See also[link]

• Legal systems of the world (includes links to legal systems of specific countries)
• Sir Henry Maine
• Friedrich Karl von Savigny
• Jurisprudence
• German Historical School
• Comparative criminal justice
• Rule of law
• Rule According to Higher Law
• Sociology of law
• Annual Bulletin of the Comparative Law Bureau (1908), the first comparative law journal in the U.S

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Cotterrell, Roger (2006) Law, Culture and Society. Aldershot, Ashgate.
• David, René; Brierley, John E. C. (1985). Major Legal Systems in the World Today: An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Law. London: Stevens. ISBN 0-420-47340-8. 
• De Cruz, Peter (2007) Comparative Law in a Changing World, 3rd edn (1st edn 1995). London: Routledge-Cavendish.
• Donahue, Charles (2008) 'Comparative Law before the Code Napoléon' in Reimann, Mathias and Zimmermann, Reinhard (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Glanert, Simone (2008) 'Speaking Language to Law: The Case of Europe', Legal Studies 28: 161–171.
• Glenn, H. Patrick (2010) Legal Traditions of the World, 4th edn (1st edn 2000). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Legrand, Pierre (1996) 'European Legal Systems Are Not Converging', International and Comparative Law Quarterly 45: 52 - 81.
• Legrand, Pierre (1997) 'Against a European Civil Code', Modern Law Review 60: 44 - 63.
• Legrand, Pierre and Munday, Roderick (2003) (eds.) Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and Transitions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Legrand, Pierre (2003) 'The Same and the Different' in Legrand, Pierre and Munday, Roderick (eds.) Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and Transitions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mattei, Ugo; Ruskola, Teemu (2009). Schlesinger's Comparative Law. London: Foundation. ISBN 1-58778-591-9. 
• Menski, Werner (2006) Comparative Law in a Global Context: the Legal Traditions of Asia and Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Nelken, David (2000) (ed.) Contrasting Criminal Justice: Getting from Here to There. Aldershot: Ashgate/Dartmouth.
• Reimann, Mathias and Zimmermann, Reinhard (2008) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

External links[link]

• Alan Watson Foundation
• Australian Institute of Comparative Legal Systems
• Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law at Tulane University Law School
• International Academy of Comparative Law French
• International Association of Constitutional Law
• International Constitutional Law
• JuriGlobe
• Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
• Oxford University Comparative Law Forum

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Medal record
Men's rugby union
Competitor for the  United States
Olympic Games
Gold	1924 Paris	Team competition

Richard Frank Hyland (July 26, 1900 – July 16, 1981) was an American rugby union player who competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics.

He was a member of the American rugby union team, which won the gold medal. Hyland also played college football at Stanford University, and went on to become a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times.^[1]

External links[link]

• profile

References[link]

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Mary Ann Glendon. U.S. State Department photo

Mary Ann Glendon (born October 7, 1938 Pittsfield, Massachusetts) J.D., LL.M., was the United States Ambassador to the Holy See (2008–2009), and is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches and writes on bioethics, comparative constitutional law, property, and human rights in international law. She is pro-life and "writes forcefully against the expansion of abortion rights."^[1]

Career[link]

Glendon graduated from University of Chicago Law School, where she served on law review.

Glendon is the author of Rights Talk; A Nation Under Lawyers, and A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1994, she was a signer of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, an ecumenical document aimed at rapprochement between Catholics and Evangelicals. Glendon became the first female President of the Roman Catholic Church's Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, when she was appointed by Pope John Paul II on March 9, 2004 (she was already a member of the academy since January 9, 1994).

In 1995, she was the Vatican representative to the international 1995 Beijing Conference on Women sponsored by the United Nations, where she contested the use of condoms for the prevention of HIV and AIDS. "The Holy See in no way endorses contraception or the use of condoms, either as a family planning measure or in HIV/AIDS prevention programs."^[2]

The National Law Journal named her one of the "Fifty Most Influential Women Lawyers in America" in 1998.

Glendon was appointed by President Bush to the President's Council on Bioethics. Her nomination as United States Ambassador to the Holy See was announced on 5 November 2007.^[3] The U.S. Senate voted to confirm her on December 19, 2007.^[4] She presented her Letters of Credence to Pope Benedict XVI on 29 February 2008, and resigned her office effective January 19, 2009.^[5]

Glendon was selected by the University of Notre Dame as the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Laetare Medal but declined the award due to the university's controversial^[6] decision to host Barack Obama as its commencement speaker and bestow upon him an honorary degree.^[7] In light of Obama's strong pro-choice policies,^[8] Glendon considered Notre Dame's decision to be in violation of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' 2004 pronouncement that Catholic institutions should not give "awards, honors, or platforms" to "those who act in defiance of [Catholic] fundamental moral principles."^[9] Glendon also felt that the university was implicitly trying to use her acceptance speech to give the appearance of balance to the event and expressed concern about the "ripple effect" Notre Dame's disregard of the USCCB pronouncement is having on the nation's other Catholic schools.^[9]

She later received an award from the National Right to Life Committee at its Pro-Life Awards Dinner in October.^[10]

Glendon writes and serves on the advisory council for First Things, an ecumenical journal that encourages a religiously informed philosophy for the ordering of society.

Politics[link]

Glendon is a supporter of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election^[11]. She also supported Romney's campaign in the 2008 presidential election.^[1]

Quotes[link]

"What is clearly 'old-fashioned' today is the old feminism of the 1970s — with its negative attitudes toward men, marriage and motherhood, and its rigid party line on abortion."^[12]

See also[link]

• George W. Bush Supreme Court candidates

References[link]

External links[link]

• Articles by Mary Ann Glendon in First Things
• Harvard Law School: Learned Hand Professor of Law Mary Ann Glendon
• glendonbooks.com: Professor Mary Ann Glendon
• Wall Street Journal: Commentary on U.S. Federal Marriage Amendment
• The President's Council on Bioethics: Biography of Mary Ann Glendon
• The Holy See: Mary Ann Glendon
• The Marian Library:Holy See's Final Statement at Women's Conference in Beijing
• University of Navarra: Mary Ann Glendon awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Navarra (in Spanish)
• Glendon's page at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences

v t e United States Ambassadors to the Holy See William A. Wilson 1984–1986 · Frank Shakespeare 1986–1989 · Thomas Patrick Melady 1989–1993 · Raymond Flynn 1993–1997 · Lindy Boggs 1997–2001 · Jim Nicholson 2001–2005 · Francis Rooney 2005–2008 · Mary Ann Glendon 2008–2009 · Miguel H. Díaz 2009–