This is an ambitious project by Geoffrey Samuel and one that hopefully exposes more scholars and students to the variety of methodological and theoretical approaches of comparative law and comparative legal theory…The potential methodological framework through the ten dichotomies in the concluding remarks provides an excellent road map for issues that researchers should keep in mind when embarking on a comparative legal theory project…For those who are in the target audience and are interested in questions about comparative law and legal theory, this text should be a welcome resource.
- Allyson C. Yankle, Law and Politics Book Review
This volume is...a recapitulation of the reflection carried out by one of the most renowned, critical and thoughtful scholars in the field...this book is certainly a must read.
- Emma Patrignani, The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law
The author provides a short introduction to various models by which law is conceptualised, mostly by works of jurisprudence and sociology of law, from the rule model to the system model, and the fundamental dichotomies dividing them, showing how problematic it is to subscribe to any of them. (...) As comparative law studies move onward, the map that Samuel unfolds on the table will have to be expanded, but without it much would not be known, understood or perhaps even noticed.
- Michele Graziadei, Zeitschrift fur Europaisches Privatrecht
1. Problems and Promises of Comparative Law
2. Asking the Right Question
3. What is ‘Comparison’?
4. Functional Method
5. Alternatives to Functionalism
6. Structural Method
7. Hermeneutical Method
8. What is ‘Law’ (1)?
9. What is Law (2)?
10. Paradigm Orientations
Original works on legal theory.
This series, published under the auspices of the European Academy of Legal Theory, encompasses original works on legal theory, including the winner of the European Award for Legal Theory. This is an award made biennially to the author of the best European doctoral thesis in the area of legal theory and philosophy of law.