Esin Orucu – författare

All legal systems are mixed; some more than others. There are covert mixtures, overt mixtures, stable mixtures, ones in transition. This book brings together a wide range of legal orders, some well known, some not so often studied. Eighteen legal orders are covered by experts directly acquainted with the orders they write about. The analysis offered is far beyond a decriptive one, the general aim being to provide a basis for discussion by covering paths, methods and specific techniques, consequences and implications of legal migration. The newly emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, for example, are looking at the pool of models when re-designing their systems. Such systems in transition open up a whole new world of possibilities for research. The two final chapters on spectral jurisprudence and the conceptual search bring into focus and widen the analysis further.

As society becomes more global and multicultural, many lawyers find themselves researching and applying principles and rules from several legal traditions. In Europe especially, the gradual convergence of civil law and common law that has been under way for decades is now gaining depth and breadth from aspects of Islamic, Asian, and African legal cultures, and we are all the better for it.

So it is time to take stock of where the discipline of comparative law stands and where it is going, a task ably undertaken in the sixteen insightful essays in this book. The originals of these papers were delivered at the 2000 W.G. Hart Legal Workshop at the Institute of Legal Studies of the University of London. They may be read here as not merely comparative law studies, but penetrating theses about what comparative law is actually about, or what it is for.

The general discussion tends to fall into three major areas:

Comparative Law in the 21st Century confronts all these looming issues from a vantage point that reveals the broad contours of law as practised and studied today and tomorrow, highlighting fast-moving trends that were unsuspected as little as two decades ago.