- published: 04 Jul 2015
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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, Jewish 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 globalization and democratization.
The origins of modern comparative law can be traced back to 18th century Europe, although, prior to that, legal scholars had always practiced comparative methodologies.
Montesquieu is generally regarded as an early founding figure of comparative law. His comparative approach is obvious in the following excerpt from Chapter III of Book I of his masterpiece, De l'esprit des lois (1748; first translated by Thomas Nugent, 1750):
Ugo Mattei (born 1961 in Turin, Piedmont) is the Alfred and Hanna Fromm Professor of International and Comparative Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco, California and a full Professor of Civil Law in the University of Turin, Italy. He is the Academic Coordinator of the International University College of Turin, Italy, a radically new school where issues of law and finance in global capitalism are critically approached. He is also currently a columnist for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto.
Mattei was born in Turin, Italy, in 1961. He graduated first in his class in 1983 from the Law School of the University of Turin and he received his LL.M. from Boalt Hall (University of California, Berkeley School of Law) in 1989 where he was a Fulbright Fellow. He also attended the London School of Economics and the Faculté Internationale de Droit Comparé in Strasbourg.
Mattei has been a visiting scholar at Yale Law School and the Trinity College and Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and a visiting professor at Oslo, Berkeley, Montpellier, Macau. In 1985 he joined the law school of the University of Trento as an assistant professor and he received tenure as a full professor in 1990. In Trento he taught civil law and Introduction to African Law and Institutions. In 1992 he was appointed as a professor in the Faculté Internationale de Droit Comparé (Strasbourg), where he served for four years.