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A Return to That Other Country: Legal History as Comparative Law

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Scholarship, Practice and Education in Comparative Law

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Abstract

The chapter themes are: What is Legal History? What is Comparative Law? What are the Techniques of Legal Historians? What are the Techniques of Comparative Lawyers? What are the Aims of Legal Historians? What are the Aims of Comparative Lawyers? Is Comparative Law any more than Legal History? Is Legal History any more than Comparative Law?; and what has been learned in the last Quarter of a Century?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ancel, M. (1971). Utilité et Méthodes du Droit Comparé. Neuchatel: Calendes.

  2. 2.

    Roebuck, D. ‘The Past is Another Country: Legal History as Comparative Law’. (1994). Asia Pacific LR (Special Issue), 9–23, repr Roebuck, D. (2010). Disputes and Differences: Comparisons in Law, Language and History. Oxford: HOLO Books. 249–261.

  3. 3.

    Milsom, SFC. (1969). Historical Foundations of the Common Law. London: Butterworths. 8.; Holdsworth, WS. (1938). Some Makers of English Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 266–68.

  4. 4.

    Collingwood, RG. (2005). The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9.

  5. 5.

    Walsh, WH. (1967). An Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Hutchinson: Hutchinson University Library. 32. Much ink has been wasted on agonising over whether history is a science, without recognising that ‘science’ means different things in different languages and at different times, or that, when applied to a department of scholarship, it is merely a label not an accolade.

  6. 6.

    Gutteridge, HC. (1946). Comparative Law Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1.; Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1984). An Introduction to Comparative Law (2nd edition). Weir, T. (trs. From German) (1987). Oxford: Clarendon Press. I p2.

  7. 7.

    Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. Ibid.; Ancel, M., n 1. 31.: ‘la constatation des points communs et des divergences qui existent entre deux ou plusieurs droits nationaux’.

  8. 8.

    Maine, H. (1871). Village Communities in the East and West. London: John Murray. 3, 4.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 7. It would go too far, though, to deny that the medievalist may still gain insights from travel. I hesitate to accept the opinion that comparative law, in contrast to legal history, has ‘un critère que nous pouvons qualifier de métahistorique’ and ‘se retrouve une et entière dans la pure raison’, Vecchio, G.G. (1960). ‘Les Bases du Droit Comparé et les Principes Generaux de Droit’. Revue Internationale de Droit Comparé, 12, 493–499, 498.

  10. 10.

    Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H., n 6. 2.; Eörsi, G. (1979). Comparative Civil (Private) Law. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. 18ff.

  11. 11.

    Ancel, M., n 1., 38.

  12. 12.

    Ancel, M., n 1., Chapter VII, 87–103.

  13. 13.

    Maitland, FW. (2010). (Ed). Bracton’s Note Book: A Collection of Cases Decided in the King’s Courts during the Reign of Henry the Third. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. I 34–45; Richardson, HG. (1966). Bracton: The Problem of His Text. London: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. 1–11.

  14. 14.

    No wonder he was peremptorily ordered to return the roll in 1258: Maitland, FW. (2010). Ibid. 79. Richardson, HG. (1966). Ibid. 73–74, proves there must have been a manuscript intermediate between the plea roll and the Note Book.

  15. 15.

    Thorne, SE. (1968). Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England. Harvard: Harvard University Press. II p19 (folio 1).

  16. 16.

    Maitland, FW. (2010)., n 13., 8–11. Milsom, SFC. (1969)., n 3., 8: ‘Legal history is not unlike that children’s game in which you draw lines between numbered dots, and suddenly from the jumble a picture emerges: but our dots are not numbered.’

  17. 17.

    Gutteridge, HC. (1946)., n 6., 6.

  18. 18.

    Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1984)., n 6., 23.

  19. 19.

    Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1984)., n 6., 25.; Rheinstein, M. (1997). Einführung in die Rechtsvergleichung. Munich: Beck. 11–36.

  20. 20.

    Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1984)., n 6., 25.

  21. 21.

    This is where I would take issue with Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1984)., n 6., 31. There can be no ‘praesumptio similitudinis, a presumption that the practical results are similar.’ Presumptions of any kind are dangerous.

  22. 22.

    I am not sure that it is helpful - if it is possible - to ‘free law from its background’ as Zweigert and Kötz seem to suggest; pace Karl Renner. (1929). Institutions of Private Law and their Social Functions. London: Routledge & K. Paul. (trs. 2010) by New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.

  23. 23.

    Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1984)., n 6., 24, 40.

  24. 24.

    Gutteridge, HC. (1946)., n 6., 124.

  25. 25.

    Gutteridge, HC. (1946)., n 6., 9, 37–40, 54–57, 61–62.

  26. 26.

    Rabel, E. (1922). Gesammelte Aufsätze. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck., quoted in Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1984)., n 6., 27. This exhortation has become a warning in Kahn-Freund, O. (1974). ‘On Uses and Misuses of Comparative Law’. MLR, 37(1) 1, 27: ‘the comparative method… required a knowledge not only of the foreign law but also of its social and above all its political context. The use of comparative law for practical purposes becomes an abuse only it if is informed by a legalistic spirit which ignores this context’.

  27. 27.

    The opportunity and obligation must be accepted here of stating that race is not a scientific category but a dangerous fantasy.

  28. 28.

    And equally in ‘undeveloped’, though change may not manifest itself in the same ways.

  29. 29.

    Ancel, M., n 1., 88.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    Ibid.: ‘La méthode historique examine les faits verticalement, tandis que la méthode comparative les examine horizontalement’.

  32. 32.

    Szabó, I. & Péteri, Z. (1977). A Socialist Approach to Comparative Law. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. 42.

  33. 33.

    Ancel, M., n 1., 88.

  34. 34.

    North, R. (1824). A Discourse on the Study of the Laws. London: Hargrave. 40.

  35. 35.

    Rodière, R. (1979). Introduction au Droit Comparé. Paris: Dalloz. 139, 147: ‘on ne doit pas comparer entre elles des règles isolées de leur contexte historique’; Schwarz-Libermann von Wahlendorf, H.A. (1978). Droit Comparé. Paris: Librairie generale de droit et de jurisprudence. 176, 191–192.

  36. 36.

    Lloyd, P.M. ‘On the Names of Languages’ in Wright, R. (Ed.). (1991). Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle Ages. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press. 15.

  37. 37.

    Cicero. (55 BCE). De Oratore. 44., quoted by Del Vecchio. (1960). Es Bases Du Droit Comparé Et Les Principes Généraux Du Droit. 494: ‘L’orgueil national poussa souvent à attribuer à sa propre race une valeur exclusive’.

  38. 38.

    Campbell, R. (1969). (Ed.). Ruling Cases. London: Penguin. II piii.

  39. 39.

    Pound, R. (1937). The Future of the Common Law. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 57–61. Cf. Maitland, FW. (2010)., n 13., 8: ‘Still we may take this from foreigners, that when we set our legal literature beside that of continental Europe it is not of Bracton that we need to be ashamed’ with (on a later period) Dawson, J.P. (1994). Oracles of the Law. New York: Legal Classics Library. 143: ‘The wretched poverty of English Year Book learning stands in striking contrast to the wealth and range and intellectual power of Italian legal literature of the fourteenth century’. Future generations will look back with amazement that scholars can still subjectively identify themselves with others in their nation’s present, let alone the distant past. Szabó, I. & Péteri, Z. (1977)., n 32., 9.: heavily mocks this chauvinism.

  40. 40.

    Poivre, P. (1719–1786). Voyages d’un Philosophe. Yverdon.

  41. 41.

    Crittall, E. (Ed.). (1981). Justicing Notebook of William Hunt 1744–1749. Devizes: Wiltshire Record Society XXXVII.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 426.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 382.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, London, UK

    Derek Roebuck

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  1. Derek Roebuck
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Bond University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

    John H. Farrar

  2. Faculty of Law, Bond University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

    Vai Io Lo

  3. Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

    Bee Chen Goh

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Roebuck, D. (2019). A Return to That Other Country: Legal History as Comparative Law. In: Farrar, J., Lo, V., Goh, B. (eds) Scholarship, Practice and Education in Comparative Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9246-7_3

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