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• > Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law
• > Introduction: Situating, Researching, and Writing Comparative Legal History

Book contents

• Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law
• Copyright page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Situating, Researching, and Writing Comparative Legal History
• 1 ‘In aliquibus locis est consuetudo’: French Lawyers and the Lombard Customs of Fiefs in the Mid-Thirteenth Century
• 2 What Does Regiam maiestatem Actually Say (and What Does it Mean)?
• 3 James VI and I, rex et iudex : One King as Judge in Two Kingdoms
• 4 George Harris and the Comparative Legal Background of the First English Translation of Justinian’s Institutes
• 5 The Nature of Custom: Legal Science and Comparative Legal History in Blackstone’s Commentaries
• 6 Through a Glass Darkly: English Common Law Seen through the Lens of the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen (Eighteenth Century)
• 7 Looking Afresh at the French Roots of Continuous Easements in English Law
• 8 Case Law in Germany: The Significance of Seuffert’s Archiv
• 9 Leone Levi (1821–1888) and the History of Comparative Commercial Law
• 10 Radical Title of the Crown and Aboriginal Title: North America 1763, New South Wales 1788, and New Zealand 1840
• 11 The High Court of Australia at Mid-Century: Concealed Frustrations, Private Advocacy, and the Break with English Law
• 12 English Societal Laws as the Origins of the Comprehensive Slave Laws of the British West Indies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

• 3 James VI and I, rex et iudex: One King as Judge in Two Kingdoms

This volume is a selection of essays taken from the excellent range of papers presented at the British Legal History Conference hosted by the Institute for Legal and Constitutional Research at the University of St Andrews, 10–13 July 2019. The theme of the conference gives this book its title: ‘comparative legal history’. The topic came easily to the organisers because of their association with the St Andrews-based European Research Council Advanced grant project ‘Civil law, common law, customary law: consonance, divergence and transformation in Western Europe from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries’. But the chosen topic was also connected to the fact that this was, we think, the first British Legal History Conference held at a university without a Law faculty. Bearing in mind the question of how far institutional setting determines approach, our hope was that an element of fruitful comparison would stimulate people to think further about the range of approaches to legal history. With its explicit agenda of breaking down barriers, comparative legal history provided a particularly suitable focus for this investigation. After situating the subject matter of comparative legal history, and then discussing the levels of comparison that may be most fertile, this introduction moves on to considering the practical tasks of researching and writing such history, using the essays included in the volume to suggest ways ahead. The introduction groups the essays under certain headings: ‘Exploring legal transplants’; ‘Investigating broader geographical areas’; ‘Case law, precedent and relationships between legal systems’; and ‘Exploring past comparativists and the challenges of writing comparative legal history’. Yet the essays could be kaleidoscopically rearranged under many headings. We hope that the book, like a successful conference, includes many stimulating conversations.

F. W. Maitland wrote that ‘history involves comparison … an isolated system cannot explain itself, still less explain its history’. Footnote 1 Comparative approaches are vital for answering broad questions and understanding specific issues. Investigating both difference and similarity, they can seek patterns, construct narratives and test theories of causation. Sometimes they are explicit, sometimes implicit. Comparison, conscious or unconscious, is inevitably present in producing and testing analyses, in asking ‘what if this were not the case?’, ‘what if we change certain conditions?’ Such has been described as the ‘quasi-Popperian’ role of comparison: ‘comparison is the closest that historians can get to testing, attempting to falsify, their own explanations’. Footnote 2 At the same time, comparison may also produce fresh hypotheses, for example, asking ‘is this pattern of change replicated elsewhere?’ or ‘are differences more assumed than real?’, hypotheses that may be more resilient after themselves being tested through further comparison.

Comparison has long featured in investigation of legal development, be it between the Germanic and the Roman in the great founding works of German legal historical scholarship, or between Common law and Civil law in classic works on English legal history. Studies of comparative legal history have grown in the twentieth- and the twenty-first centuries, Footnote 3 along with some studies of the history of comparative legal history. Footnote 4 The work has been conducted predominantly by scholars situated – by disciplinary formation or institutional affiliation – within Law rather than History. This is evident, for example, when examining the list of contributors to volumes such as the 2019 collection Comparative Legal History , which describes itself as ‘an emblematic product of the European Society for Comparative Legal History ’. Footnote 5 This predominance is true both of studies of specific legal topics and of writings on approaches. Footnote 6 In the latter, it is manifest in the focus upon the relationship of comparative legal history to law and comparative law, with little or no mention of a relationship to history and comparative history. Footnote 7

The present volume is deliberately subtitled ‘Essays in comparative legal history’; the essays tackle aspects of law, including practice, doctrine, and academe, rather than being theoretical or methodological papers on comparative legal history. Likewise, this introduction concentrates on possibilities and problems of practice, rather than on the philosophical, unless one counts pragmatism and pluralism as philosophies. Such is not to put a perspective from History in place of a perspective from Law. Nor is it simply advocacy of pluralism from two authors who are hybrids in their own disciplinary formation and/or attachment. A similarly pragmatic desire resonates from at least some lawyers’ methodological studies:

Comparative legal historians should find a middle road between elaborating a potentially overly sophisticated comparative methodology and simply getting on with research without a conscious or at least obvious one. … [The] final element of comparative methodology that the comparative legal historian can take from comparative law is … a lesson in when to stop, in this case when to stop discussing it and actually use it. Footnote 8

The Subject Matter of Comparative Legal History

A preliminary question must be ‘what is the subject matter of legal history?’ The simple answer of course is ‘Law’ – or ‘law’ or possibly ‘the law’. Footnote 9 However, as comparative legal scholars are particularly aware, considerable difficulty remains in defining this subject matter. Footnote 10 Modern definitions or characterisations of law are contested. The effect of different definitions upon the writing of legal history is readily apparent. Footnote 11 So too is the effect of characterisations of law that rest less on definition of what a law or the Law is than on the perceived functioning of law, be they, for example, Marxist or Ehrlich’s ‘living law’. These produce a different approach to the relationship between law and context. Footnote 12 The notion of the ‘relative autonomy’ of law provides a partial solution, but only if ‘relative’ is a notion acutely interrogated rather than what Maitland might describe as ‘a useful word [that] will cover a multitude of ignorances’. Footnote 13 Such pondering and investigation in turn may produce the type of metaphorical language that sometimes also appears in writings on comparative legal history, E. P. Thompson’s ‘imbrication’ being one such metaphor. Footnote 14

The comparative and historical aspects increase the difficulties still further. What is legal history about, if both law and concepts of law are not constant but shaped by context? Footnote 15 Can modern jurisprudential tests as to what is law, or what are rules of law, be employed to indicate the limits of law in past societies? Such tests impose socio-culturally determined ideas, ironically sometimes applied to convict others of anachronism in depiction of past ‘law’. Verbal contortions arising from, and perhaps required for sustaining, a highly specific definition of law go back in English jurisprudence at least to the nineteenth century with John Austin’s use of the phrase ‘laws improperly so called’. Footnote 16

So, would it be better for the legal historian, especially when also a comparativist, to work with a broader definition, or at least a broad core categorisation, to answer ‘what is law?’, ‘what is the object of study?’ The aim must be to avoid easily criticised supposed universals or precise but unhelpful hyper-nominalism. This may involve thinking about practice and abstraction therefrom, about the field of study being a particular area of practice and knowledge in which certain people have expertise. Footnote 17 Take the following suggestion by Brian Simpson:

The predominant conception today is that the common law consists of a system of rules; in terms of this legal propositions (if correct) state what is contained in these rules. I wish to consider the utility of this conception, and to contrast it with an alternative idea – the idea that the common law is best understood as a system of customary law, that is, as a body of traditional ideas received within a caste of experts. Footnote 18

Focus on knowledge linked to practice resonates with ideas of legal cultures or ‘law in minds’ as the proper subject for comparative study. Footnote 19 It may provide, if not a definitive solution to the problem of the field of comparative study, at least a way forward, and it requires the necessary examination of the definitions, categorisations and vocabulary used by those studied, and dialogue between such terminologies and our own.

What Sort of Legal History?

The next, related, issue is what sort of legal history comparative legal historians are doing, an issue that methodological writings only occasionally raise. Footnote 20 The issue is pressing because of the extensive divisions between varieties of legal history, partly although not solely disciplinary. Footnote 21 Is the concentration to be the internal history of law, described by David Ibbetson as follows: ‘A legal system does have its own separate history … and even though it is inevitably embedded in the extra-legal world … legal change takes place within this system and can only be understood in terms of it’? Footnote 22 Or is it to be the external history: ‘External legal history is the history of law as embedded in its context, typically its social or economic context.’ Footnote 23 Or should the two be integrated, not least because some views of law render the division more difficult? Is integration particularly necessary regarding causation, periodisation and construction of a narrative? Footnote 24 Likewise, is the focus– in Roscoe Pound’s useful if contested phrase – ‘Law in books’ or ‘Law in action’? And is there a point where the social history of law – as epitomised, for example, in Albion’s Fatal Tree – ceases to be a form of legal history? Footnote 25

To argue that any particular method is the sole correct one may require a degree of circularity: that an internal history of law is the only proper one because that is what the history of law is, or that a social history of law is the only proper one because law can only be considered in social context. Instead, a single, holistic approach, incorporating elements of all others, might be considered the correct method. However, it may be necessary in practical terms – and indeed desirable in theoretical terms, as well as best fitting personal aptitude – that individuals pursue different approaches, whilst ensuring those approaches are explicit and in dialogue: what may be called legal historical pluralism.

Making Comparisons

Beyond these issues, there are further clear difficulties in conducting comparative studies. Familiar from many discussions are difficulties such as the comparative use of concepts such as ‘ownership’ or ‘crime’. Footnote 26 A solution – be it functionalist or other – again must avoid treating such concepts as unchanging, uncontextualised universals, whilst not lapsing into uninformative, irreducible nominalism where all that is apparent is difference. In contrast, theoretical writings are sometimes surprisingly vague as to what comparative legal history is seeking to explain. Two related aspects that have received attention are legal transplants and entanglements. Footnote 27 Whilst such analyses sometimes are comparative, and can indeed benefit greatly from a comparative aspect, Footnote 28 sometimes they are not, and perhaps need not be; rather, they are intent on creatively disrupting supposedly separate units. However, topics such as transplants do emphasise that comparative legal history must help to explain not just the particular legal systems compared but also the nature, processes and causes of legal change. Footnote 29 Such is yet another reason for the difficulty of comparative legal history. To the difficulties of comparative law, it adds a third dimension of comparison: time.

Bearing in mind the above, what are the possible units of comparison for the legal historian? Footnote 30 Generally, comparison has been between ‘legal systems’ – archetypically between Civil law and Common law – or between geographical areas, especially between political units. Footnote 31 Comparison could also be between types of law – unwritten and written, custom and academic – or across time as well as place and system, as in comparisons between procedures in English Common law and Roman law. Footnote 32

A further issue is level of comparison and consequent generalisation. The ‘comparative method’ was crucial to the developing social sciences in Victorian England, including comparative law and legal history, personified by Sir Henry Maine. Supported by ideas of evolution, writers were confident in generalisations not just about specific or common patterns but about necessary and universal ones. Deprived of this belief in broad evolutionary patterns for human social and cultural development, and subjected to detailed empirical criticism, such theories have gone out of academic fashion. Only occasionally are writers prepared to speculate on whether legal systems have a ‘natural history’ or to attribute to them anthropomorphic characteristics. Footnote 33

Still, there is an opposite – probably reactive – danger, of insufficiently broad comparison. This may lapse into lists of similar or dissimilar rules or procedures. Rather than comparing individual rules or attempting to uncover universal patterns, therefore, the task is to find an intermediate level of comparison, to seek contrasting or shared patterns of legal norms, processes and change. Footnote 34 Very useful lists for comparison have been offered, for example: ‘1. Fact patterns. 2. Institutions. 3. Reasoning. 4. Principles and concepts. 5. Substantive legal rules. 6. Procedure. 7. Outcomes.’ Footnote 35 Objects of comparison may range from the broad to the very particular, from structures of legal thought, through legal learning and education, Footnote 36 clusters of rules and practices, to individual rules or the related functions of different rules in the compared systems, and on to the very specific, for example the judicial activities of one individual in different courts. Footnote 37 Multiple perspectives can contribute: be it in litigation or transaction, starting from the participant point of view – ‘actor-based’ analysis – may reveal similarities and differences between types of law hidden to comparative analysis starting from legal rules or procedure.

Such explorations can also be formulated in specific research questions, again of differing scope. For example, such questions may form part of a wider analysis of the generation, development, and functioning of legal norms. Are clashes between unwritten customs resolved in different ways from clashes between written rules? Is there a difference in the strictness of application of procedural and of substantive norms? How far are norms brought into play by litigants, how far by those presiding over courts? In what ways do legal norms and processes fit diverse circumstances into set forms, and how are problems arising from such constrictions then remedied? Footnote 38 Such analysis will return to questions such as that of the relationship of procedure and substantive norms, and to Maine’s oft-quoted but rarely tested suggestion that ‘substantive law has at first the look of being gradually secreted in the interstices of procedure’. Footnote 39

Similarities uncovered by comparison may thus be in patterns of law or legal development, rather than identical rules. The focus may be on what notions structure legal thought. There may be similarities or differences in assumptions, in underlying principles or pervasive ideas, in what S. F. C. Milsom described as ‘elementary legal ideas’ so fundamental that they are rarely stated yet must be uncovered to allow any possibility of further understanding. Footnote 40 Investigation at this level may also allow exploration, not just of what existed, what changed, or when and why, but also of how law worked and developed, for example through replicable and adaptable units. Such intermediate level comparisons of groupings of ideas, assumptions and practices may analyse what Duncan Kennedy termed a ‘subsystem’ in legal consciousness, ‘a small set of conceptual building blocks, along with a small set of typical arguments as to how the concepts should be applied, to produce results that seem to the jurists involved to have a high level of coherence with and across legal fields’. Footnote 41 Such analysis may in turn reveal the coexistence of competing subsystems or models, the interaction of which may be central to legal development. Footnote 42

Researching and Writing Comparative Legal History

The above discussion has been punctuated with statements of difficulties and with numerous questions. And, one fears, the problems are not yet exhausted. A further reason for the absence in particular of book-length comparative studies is the sheer amount of research required. Maitland encapsulated the difficulty in his requirement that ‘The first step towards an answer must be a careful statement of each system by itself. We must know in isolation the things that are to be compared before we compare them.’ Footnote 43 All too easy are flawed shortcuts, particular in researching comparators beyond the author’s particular speciality. Such shortcuts are manifest in assumptions of uniformity within the systems compared – including such casual contrasts as ‘Anglo-American Common Law’ and ‘Continental European Civil Law’ Footnote 44 – or in comparing a full picture of law on one side with a picture solely of ‘Law in books’ on the other. The challenge of the balance between the possible and the ideal, present in most research, is especially prominent here. The sheer bulk of material multiplies particularly if the approach emphasises the external or the social history of law, Footnote 45 but also if it involves a widely defined notion of ‘legal culture’. Footnote 46 Moreover, volume of research looms still more threateningly if it is felt methodologically desirable to have more than two comparators in order to avoid coincidental patterns achieving mistaken significance. Collaboration provides an answer, but the danger remains of a plethora of fragmented studies, awaiting the immensely challenging process of synthesis: more data does not automatically provide more explanation. Footnote 47

The hope will be that comparison provides better explanation. Take analysis of causation of legal change, with an external perspective: if similar legal developments occur in markedly different socio-economic settings, apparent links between legal and socio-economic change must be rejected in favour of other or more complex explanations. Comparison may often have a destructive rather than constructive effect. This may be particularly true of causal explanation within external approaches to legal history, but is not limited to such: Footnote 48

comparative law and legal history working together can prevent three methodological assumptions: that a common rule across jurisdictions results from common needs, that a common or similar rule has been adopted solely on its merits in the marketplace of ideas, and that a rule which has flourished in more than one place can be explained by the circumstances of only one time and place. Footnote 49

These are indeed general problems in analysis of historical causation and in construction of narrative. Footnote 50 However, rather than the scholarly reaction being one of defeat, we may welcome the opportunities for removing misinterpretation, for accepting the role of contingency, Footnote 51 and for redoubling efforts to construct and test explanation.

The essays presented in this volume illustrate some of the ways in which comparative legal history may be approached, and how such studies can test all-too-easily accepted narratives or provide fresh perspectives on familiar legal and historical developments. The approaches that have been taken vary, all in their different ways examining and illuminating the causes and nature of legal change. Several essays directly explore legal ‘transplants’. Others consider the uniformity of legal development across broad geographical areas. Further authors examine a related issue, the role of case law and precedent in legal development, an examination which not only challenges an oft-assumed bright line between Common and Civil law systems, but also encourages examination of the relationship between jurisdictions sharing a Common law heritage. A final strand of essays concerns the work of past comparativists, which can reveal much about how fundamental units of comparison such as ‘legal systems’ have been understood historically. These essays also allow us to compare our own experience of comparative study with the endeavours of those attempting such work in the past.

Exploring Legal Transplants

A comparison of the essays concerning legal transplants reveals a variety of forms that such transplants can take, and how they may or may not work. Alice Taylor discusses the transplant of a text from one legal system to another; that is, the appearance of much of the content of the twelfth-century English legal treatise known as Glanvill in the fourteenth-century Scottish treatise Regiam maiestatem . This is a cross-border transplant for which the probable passage of time between the production of the Glanvill text and its introduction into another system adds not only complexity but also explanatory potential. The similarities between Glanvill and Regiam maiestatem have long been recognised, but Taylor offers a new explanation of why Glanvill was used so extensively. Regiam maiestatem , she argues, may be seen as an ‘intercontextual translation’, whereby the authority of Glanvill was used as a vehicle for conveying an argument for the maiestas of Scottish kings during the reign of Robert I. Traditional narratives have emphasised the importance during this period of ideas about the ‘community of the realm’; the idea of royal maiestas , Taylor argues, represents an important alternative strain of political thought, which offers a new interpretation of the intellectual underpinnings of Robert I’s kingship. Taylor’s essay thus illustrates how the study of legal transplants can disrupt familiar narratives. It also shows how such transplants may create only the illusion of legal change or convergence, and therefore be of little obvious consequence to the internal history of law, yet nevertheless be extremely politically significant and also have a long-term effect on legal culture.

Taylor’s essay focuses more on the broad political principle that could be promoted through Regiam maiestatem and less on the individual rules contained in the text. In contrast, Ciara Kennefick’s essay addresses the transplant of an aspect of a particular rule from one system to another. This is the concept of ‘continuous’ in relation to the rule that an easement which is ‘continuous and apparent’ may be created in certain circumstances by implication, rather than by express grant, when land held by one owner is subsequently divided. Following the point made by Simpson in an earlier article, Kennefick shows how this rule concerning servitudes can be traced to an idea in the French Civil Code. Footnote 52 It crossed the sea and entered English law when it was included in Charles Gale’s Treatise on Easements , published in 1839, and from that moment it caused difficulties of interpretation. Kennefick adds another perspective to Simpson’s argument by analysing this development from a comparative perspective. She shows that this was a transplant of a legal rule that was also problematic in the donor jurisdiction, an insight which adds a fresh perspective to the struggles of the English courts to interpret it. Kennefick’s study thus provides three lessons for legal history, one general, two specific: (i) we must not always assume that a rule being transplanted was a good fit even for the donor system; (ii) the influence of the French Civil Code on the Common law has been underestimated; and (iii) English legal treatises were an important influence (for better or worse) on the development of certain areas of English law. By studying transplants from an explicitly comparative perspective, Kennefick’s essay also illustrates how change may not occur because of deep-rooted and widely shared structures of legal thought. Instead, it emphasises, as mentioned above, the potential role of contingency in legal development.

The complexities that may be caused by the transplantation of legal doctrine are also evident in Justine Collins’s essay, which discusses the way in which pre-colonial English law crossed the ocean and served as a basis for the slave laws of the British West Indies. This essay focuses on three broad areas: (i) the idea of slaves as chattels; (ii) the overlapping idea that slavery was analogous in many respects to villeinage; and (iii) the influence on West Indian slavery legislation of attitudes and laws concerning the control and subjugation of the lower orders in England. A related concern is the way in which colonial administrators seized upon ideas concerning the use of martial law and applied them to the governance of their territories. The legal transplants discussed by Collins operated in a system quite different from that of England, and, as Collins explains, their introduction involved a degree of improvisation. As such, attempts to connect the law of chattels and villeinage to slavery created a plethora of issues that were never fully reconciled. Footnote 53 This was especially clear when the transplanted ideas that had been adopted and adapted in the British West Indies returned to their donor system in cases requiring adjudication by the English Common law courts. Through her discussion of this last point, Collins’s essay also reveals how these cases, which stimulated debate about the precise nature of a transplanted rule or concept (such as villeinage), are very useful sources for legal historians seeking to understand attitudes towards the rule or concept in question.

The discussion of transplants in this volume is not limited to the transplantation of texts or of disembodied legal ideas. Ian Williams discusses the transplant of a person , James VI Scotland, who progressed ceremonially from Edinburgh to London in the days following the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603 and acceded to the English throne that same year . As Williams notes, ‘While law as idea is important, law can only be applied (at least for now) by people. As people move, the law in practice can change.’ Footnote 54 Although considerable attention has been devoted to James’s attempts to influence the work of his judges, Williams’s essay addresses the less-studied area of the king’s own judicial activity in both England and Scotland. As the author explains, it was not unusual for a king to act as a judge in Scotland during this period. This was not the case in England, although Williams notes that such a practice was ‘not unthinkable’. Williams investigates whether James applied his ideas about how and when a king should sit in judgment consistently, not just within each country, but also between realms. Such a consideration introduces another unit of comparison to the study: the potential differences between theory and practice. Williams shows that James certainly did seem to act according to some discernible principles applied uniformly in his activities throughout England and Scotland. However, Williams also adds a chronological dimension to his comparative matrix. James’s views on certain subjects changed over time, but Williams argues that he nevertheless continued to apply them consistently irrespective of realm: ‘The comparative exercise here lets us reach a conclusion which would surely have delighted James himself: in his ideas and practice of royal judgment we have an example of genuinely British legal history.’ Footnote 55

Investigating Broader Geographical Areas

Discussion of legal transplants is not confined to the above essays, Footnote 56 although they are the ones that deal most directly with such issues. It is clear that transplants can lead to the implementation of the same legal rules in different places, and another significant theme of the essays in this volume concerns similarities of legal development over a broad geographical area. Attilio Stella’s essay examines narratives of legal change and the development of ‘feudal law’ in Western Europe during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. He focuses on the activities of five lawyers, two from Italy (Obertus de Orto and Iacobus de Ardizone) and three from France (Jean Blanc, Jean de Blanot and Iacobus de Aurelianis), and compares the way in which they related local practice and custom to ‘learned’ doctrine and written law, particularly that contained in the Libri feudorum , a highly influential composite work concerning north Italian custom, produced in various stages between c. 1150 and c . 1250 . His conclusion disrupts the simplistic narrative that in this period there was a wholesale replacement of the ‘warm natural custom’, which reflected the spirit of the people, by the uniform ‘cold artificial law’ of professional lawyers. Instead, unwritten local legal traditions often survived and shaped Western European experiences of law during this formative period of the ius commune .

David Williams likewise considers legal doctrine. He examines the development of the doctrine of radical title – the underlying title of the Crown to Commonwealth land – and the response of courts to the question of whether this title would be burdened by the pre-existing interests of the indigenous population. Three main jurisdictions are considered – Canada, Australia and New Zealand – and reference is made to some Privy Council decisions concerning smaller territories. As Williams notes, ‘A reasonably coherent account of legal history on this topic might seem possible, and even plausible, if one focused on the development of the Common law in just one of the three legal systems.’ Footnote 57 However, comparison of the case law relating to all these jurisdictions reveals that the development of the Common law in this area has been unsystematic and often directed by policy decisions and pragmatism rather than clear legal principles.

A central, sometimes implicit, concern of Williams’s essay is the value that courts have been willing to attach to indigenous peoples’ own understanding of their relationship to their land, a relationship not necessarily expressed in legal concepts or even perhaps a form of ‘law’, familiar to a Common law lawyer. Here then, like Stella, Williams provides another insight into how a developing legal system may (or may not) integrate pre-existing normative structures into its overarching system of rules. This perhaps surprising connection between the two essays illustrates well the creative possibilities of using issues such as ‘integration’ as a tool for comparison.

Case Law, Precedent, and Relationships between Legal Systems

Williams’s and Stella’s essays both raise questions about the use of past cases, and how they may be employed either to integrate local circumstances into the interpretation and development of norms, or to ensure the consistent development of legal principles. Case law is most strongly associated with Common law systems, where the doctrine of precedent provides the foundations and framework for much legal development. In contrast, it is often regarded – at least in the Common law world – as less important to Civil law systems. Without deeper comparison, however, this casual contrast between Common law and Civil law jurisdictions may obscure similarities or distort differences.

As a direct response to such a casual comparison, Clara Günzl’s essay examines the so-called ‘case-law revolution’ which took place in Germany between 1800 and 1945. Despite clear doctrinal rules that prior decisions were not formally binding on courts, during this period case law began to play a more important role in the decision making of the German judiciary. In particular, the collection of decisions printed from 1847 to 1944 in ‘Seuffert’s Archiv ’ did much to increase awareness of previous judicial decisions and the reasoning applied in past cases. Günzl first introduces us to the debates that took place surrounding the use of case law in the period. She shows that jurists recognised the value of taking into account past decisions, but also feared the consequence that an incorrect decision would prevent courts from reaching ‘the only true and right solution’ in subsequent cases. This discussion naturally invites comparison of how different traditions of legal learning may view essential questions such as the existence of a single right answer to every legal problem, and how legal certainty corresponds to more abstract notions of justice. Günzl then uses a case study to show us how the knowledge of past decisions might, nevertheless, influence the outcome of a case in practice, and how this outcome could, in turn, become part of the collection of case law which circulated nationwide and influenced other decisions. In this sense, these judgments in past cases, Präjudizien , ‘resemble most closely those of persuasive precedents in Common law countries today’. Footnote 58

While Günzl’s essay encourages comparison between Common and Civil law systems, Josev’s essay concerns the relationship between two jurisdictions within the Common law world. Her essay examines the period leading to Australian High Court Chief Justice Sir Owen Dixon’s statement in Parker v. The Queen (1963) that Australian courts should no longer consider themselves bound by English precedent. As the author explains, this came after a period in which the Australian judiciary are usually perceived as having displayed almost complete deference towards the English courts, and the decision has sometimes been regarded ‘as the most sensational judicial volte-face in Australian legal history’. Footnote 59 However, Josev goes beyond this traditional account and reveals differing and evolving attitudes towards the relationship between English and Australian law in this period. Despite the desire of many Australian judges to maintain the unity of the Common law, Josev argues, considerable tensions existed in the years preceding Parker . These arose from differing individual attitudes between judges, as with Dixon’s disapproval of Lord Denning’s judicial activism in England, from wider dissatisfaction in Australia with some of the directions that English law was taking, and from serious concerns among some of the Australian judiciary about the activities of the Privy Council. Against this backdrop, Josev argues that it is difficult to celebrate the Parker judgment as a bold declaration of judicial independence. Rather, it should be seen as the consequence of a ‘relatively gloomy period in English–Australian legal history’. Footnote 60 Meanwhile the contribution of elements such as the cooling of Dixon’s admiration for Denning re-emphasises the need to consider the contingent as well as the more structural in explaining significant legal change.

Exploring past Comparativists and the Challenges of Writing Comparative Legal History

A fertile alternative approach to comparative legal history is to examine the work of past comparativists. This can help us better appreciate historical understandings of the nature of various legal systems, their relationships to each other, and the bounds and functions of law within these systems. The preoccupations of the past can also aid us in reflecting upon units that may be used in our own comparisons, be they between ‘written’ and ‘unwritten’ law, or between ‘Civil’ and ‘Common’ law, or between substantive rules and principles.

Several essays in this volume are dedicated to the history of comparative law. Carsten Fischer discusses the way in which the English Common law appeared in the pages of the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen , a German scholarly journal first published in 1739. A small but significant proportion of its pages were devoted to reviews of books of, or concerning, English law. Fischer concentrates on two reviews in particular, both of works published by Göttingen law professors: Christian Hartmann Samuel Gatzert’s De iure communi Angliae , published and reviewed in 1765; and Justus Claproth’s partial translation of Blackstone’s Analysis of the Laws of England , published in 1767 and reviewed in 1769. Both the content of the works reviewed in the Anzeigen and the reviews themselves reveal how English law was regarded and understood in Germany during this period. Fischer points out, for example, that an interest in the applicability of Roman law to English law may be found in the works of both Gatzert and Claproth. In general, however, there does not seem to have been any criteria for the selection of works reviewed in the Anzeigen . Nor is there anything more than a modest understanding of English law on display, and furthermore, as we shall see, problems of language affected the nature and quality of the comparisons made between English and German law. Footnote 61

Andrew Cecchinato also examines an eighteenth-century attempt to compare English law with that of the Continent. In this instance, however, the individual engaged in the comparison was very familiar indeed with the Common law. Cecchinato’s essay explores Sir William Blackstone’s attempt to situate English law within the broader legal experience of Western Europe, and thus within a shared human endeavour to give positive expression to the eternal law of God’s will. Cecchinato first draws attention to Blackstone’s interpretation and grounding of the ius commune maxim rex … in regno suo est imperator within the English legal system, through which he was able to justify the preeminence of the Common law as a body of ‘particular law’. Cecchinato then turns to Blackstone’s attempts to reconcile the fact that, while judicial decisions could be taken as strong evidence of long-standing custom, it did not necessarily follow that this evidence provided authority for the custom. How, therefore, could it be claimed that court decisions had acquired such authority? Again, Blackstone turned to civilian legal sources, comparing the manner in which the English courts dealt with custom to the way in which the emperor had the authority to ‘interpret’ law with normative force, as exemplified in the lex Si imperialis maiestas . In turn, this gave force to Blackstone’s view that judges were the ‘oracles of the law’, a metaphor which itself has roots in classical jurisprudence. Blackstone did not, however, uncritically adopt all aspects of European legal thought. His views on the importance of custom within the English legal system led him to view with disapproval how unwritten law, ‘approved by the judgment of the people’, had diminished in importance by the later years of imperial Rome .

While Blackstone was firmly rooted in the English Common law tradition, the subject of another of the essays, George Harris, had a background in Civil and ecclesiastical laws. Harris was an eighteenth-century civilian who was a member of the College of Advocates and who also engaged in judicial work. Łukasz Korporowicz examines his production of the first English translation of Justinian’s Institutes , published in the mid-eighteenth century. In particular, Korporowicz draws attention to how the translation itself is accompanied by numerous notes, ‘arguably the most significant element of the translation’. Footnote 62 Korporowicz goes on to show that these notes contain references to classical sources, legal and non-legal, different traditions of Civil law authors, and, notably, an array of Common law treatises and works of writers on English law. Harris was not formally trained in the Common law, so the inclusion of this latter material is particularly striking.

Monti’s essay concerns the comparative work of Leone Levi, an Italian-born merchant who moved to England at the age of fifteen and later became a jurist, statistician and economist. Levi spent much of his life involved in commerce, and Monti shows how this eventually led to the production of his Commercial Law of the World . The first edition of this work, published in two volumes in 1850 and 1852, took a rather different form to the revised version, International Commercial Law , which appeared in 1863. Monti points out that the full title of the earlier edition named no less than fifty-nine ‘countries’ as the subject of comparison. The later work named only twenty-five, although the words ‘and others’, added to this list, also suggest that more might have been included. Together with this change, the geographical focus of the study changed somewhat. Furthermore, the first edition set out in tabular form the laws of various countries, polities and regions which were to be compared. The plan was abandoned in the later work, and a comparison was made in discursive form.

A comparison of these essays is instructive. For one, they reveal different motives for the past employment of the comparative method. Cecchinato shows how Blackstone used comparison for justificatory purposes; he sought to explain and legitimise aspects of English law . Korporowicz, on the other hand, shows that Harris intended his translation to make the Institutes more widely accessible in England, and that the copious notes that accompanied the translation were intended to arouse curiosity about English law. Levi’s comparative works on mercantile law were likewise intended to educate, but Monti makes it clear that they were also intended to aid merchants in their dealings overseas, and to act as a step towards an international commercial code.

These essays, furthermore, provide a historical perspective on the practical challenges faced by those who have attempted and still attempt to employ a comparative method, as raised earlier in this introduction. In doing so, they encourage reflection about the process of comparative work. The issues that can arise concerning language and terminology are clear. Ideally comparatists would be highly skilled linguists, but Fischer’s, Korporowicz’s, and Monti’s essays also highlight the importance of accurate translations for the study of comparative law. However, the accurate translation of unfamiliar and highly technical legal material is no easy task, especially when the subject matter seems so alien to the reader. These linguistic challenges are made clear in Fischer’s essay, which suggests that the eighteenth-century German jurists did not enjoy their first contact with what Maitland would describe as the Common law’s ‘whole scheme of actions with repulsive names’. Footnote 63 Gatzert, in particular, complained (perhaps not unreasonably) about the ‘adventurous and un-English’ nature of the English legal language. Footnote 64 Fischer also notes how attempts made in the Anzeigen to explain the English system through analogies and descriptive terms familiar to German jurists would, in fact, have seriously misled the German reader. Here, then, is a very clear example of comparison being made through a familiar frame of reference which has the effect of distorting one’s understanding of the subject matter.

Also clear is the problem of the sheer bulk of research. Blackstone had the luxury of being able to select the principles he wished to use for the purpose of his argument. In contrast, as Monti shows, Levi presented himself with the enormous task of producing a comprehensive comparison of the mercantile law of as many as fifty-nine countries. The later reduction of this number highlights the sheer work required if such an approach is to be successful, where ‘a careful statement of each system by itself’ is indeed the necessary starting point. Footnote 65 The amount of labour required for comparative work is also evident from the reviews contained in the Anzeigen . For example, Fischer notes that in Gatzert’s review (of his own work) the author questions whether he will continue down ‘this arduous path’. Footnote 66 Harris’s work, as described by Korporowicz, represents an intermediate approach, sitting between those taken by Blackstone and Levi. Here, a detailed commentary is provided on selected parts of a specific text. In his essay, Korporowicz clearly illustrates the astonishing depth and breadth of these comments. Still, Harris’s aim was to pique his reader’s interest and stimulate comparative thought; comprehensive study of several bodies of law requires still greater labours.

Perhaps just as importantly, comparative legal history may provide salutary lessons for modern comparative endeavours. It may seem obvious to note that the method employed must fit the aim of the project. However, Monti’s essay shows that this may not be achieved as easily as one might hope, and that problems can arise because of assumptions that one makes about one’s audience and, perhaps, oneself. She argues that the tabular comparative format of Levi’s first edition of his Commercial Law might have been readily accessible to Continental lawyers, but to British lawyers, ‘the presentation might not have been self-explanatory, and would most likely have appeared complicated and somewhat cumbersome’. Footnote 67 In contrast, the more discursive revised edition was ‘better suited to the needs and expectations of an English-speaking readership’. Footnote 68 Significantly, Monti argues, ‘Levi was now a British citizen who was attuned to the needs of the Empire and its colonies; he was no longer an “outsider”.’ Footnote 69

Study of Levi has taken us back to James VI and I and consideration of the significance of the transplant of an individual, demonstrating how this introduction’s arrangement of essays into groups is just one of many possible patterns, each capable of fertile outcomes. The valuable quasi-Popperian falsifying role is but one important function of comparative approaches to legal history. Their falsifying role, for example in breaking down assumptions of uniformity within systems, coexists with producing illuminating questions and improved hypotheses. They can generate a more precise understanding of particular rules or concepts, as understood by contemporaries. They can refine our understanding of historical attitudes to law and the legal systems or doctrines that are being compared. Moreover, the pluralism of approach advocated above can produce stimulating conversation between different levels of study, from the specific to the deeper structures of Milsom’s ‘elementary legal ideas’ or Kennedy’s ‘subsystems’ of legal consciousness, and with a particular focus on processes of legal change. Footnote 70 Such investigation and such conversation can provide fresh perspectives that do not necessarily require the abandonment of a previous narrative, but instead suggest improvements to accommodate different evidence and different ideas. And perhaps just as importantly, comparative legal history may provide salutary lessons for modern comparative endeavours .

1 F. W. Maitland , ‘ Why the History of English Law is Not Written ’, in The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland , ed. H. A. L. Fisher , 3 vols. ( Cambridge , 1911 ), vol. I, 480–97 , at 488–9.

The work presented in this introduction has been supported by the European Research Council, through the Advanced grant n. 740611, ‘Civil law, common law, customary law: consonance, divergence and transformation in Western Europe from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries’ (see http://clicme.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ ). We would like to thank Matt Dawson, our co-editors and the other members of the ERC project for their comments on drafts of this introduction. John Hudson would also like to thank Susan Reynolds for her comments and for decades of exhortation always to compare.

2 C. Wickham , Problems in Doing Comparative History ( The Reuter Lecture , 2004; Southampton , 2005 ), 3 .

3 Possible starting points include W. W. Buckland and A. D. McNair , Roman Law and Common Law: A Comparison in Outline , 2nd edn ( Cambridge , 1952 ) ; A. Watson , Legal Transplants ( Edinburgh , 1974 ) ; R. Sacco , La comparaison juridique au service de la connaissance du droit ( Paris , 1991 ) ; R. Zimmermann , ‘ Savigny’s Legacy: Legal History, Comparative Law, and the Emergence of a European Legal Science ’, Law Quarterly Review , 112 ( 1996 ), 576 – 605 ; A. A. Levasseur and M. Reimann , ‘ Comparative Law and Legal History in the United States ’, American Journal of Comparative Law, Supp . 1 , 46 ( 1998 ), 1 – 15 ; M. Graziadei , ‘Comparative Law, Legal History, and the Holistic Approach to Legal Cultures ’, Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht , 7 ( 1999 ), 531–43 ; D. Heirbaut , ‘ Comparative Law and Zimmermann’s New Ius Commune: A Life-Line or a Death Sentence for Legal History? Some Reflections on the Use of Legal History for Comparative Law and Vice Versa ’, Fundamina , 11 ( 2005 ), 136–52 ; D. J. Ibbetson , ‘ Comparative Legal History: A Methodology ’, in A. Musson and C. Stebbings (eds.), Making Legal History: Approaches and Methodologies ( Cambridge , 2012 ), 131–45 ; M. Reimann and R. Zimmermann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law ( Oxford , 2006 ) ; K. Å. Modéer , ‘ Abandoning the Nationalist Framework: Comparative Legal History ’, in H. Pihlajamäki , M. D. Dubber and M. Godfrey (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History ( Oxford , 2018 ), 100–13 ; O. Moréteau , A. Masferrer and K. Å. Modéer (eds.), Comparative Legal History ( Cheltenham , 2019 ) . Also relevant are works more particularly on comparative law, but with a strong legal historical dimension: e.g. W. Ewald , ‘ Comparative Jurisprudence (I): What was it Like to Try a Rat? ’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review , 143 ( 1995 ), 1889 – 2149 ; H. P. Glenn , Legal Traditions of the World , 2nd edn ( Oxford , 2004 ).

4 E.g. A. Giuliani, ‘What is Comparative Legal History? Legal Historiography and the Revolt against Formalism, 1930–60’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , 30–77.

5 Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , vii–xiii for list of contributors, xiv for quotation.

6 There are exceptions, with writings by historians such as D. L. D’Avray , ‘ Weber and Comparative Legal History ’, in A. Lewis and M. Lobban (eds.), Law and History: Current Legal Issues, Volume 6 ( Oxford , 2004 ), 189–99 ; S. M. G. Reynolds , ‘ Early Medieval Law in India and Europe: A Plea for Comparisons ’, The Medieval History Journal , 16 ( 2013 ), 1 – 20 .

7 E.g. Graziadei, ‘Comparative Law’, 532; D. Michalsen, ‘Methodological Perspectives in Comparative Legal History: An Analytical Approach’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , 96–109, at 97, 100, 108–9; Modéer, ‘Abandoning the Nationalist Framework’; J. Gordley, ‘Comparative Law and Legal History’, in Reimann and Zimmermann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law , 754–71, at 754; A. Masferrer, K. Å. Modéer, and O. Moréteau, ‘The Emergence of Comparative Legal History’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , 1–28, at 7. M. Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History: Methodology for Morphology’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , 110–38, at 119, includes history in a list of ‘cognate disciplines’, along with economics, sociology and philosophy. Absent from citations are works such as Wickham’s Problems in Doing Comparative History , familiar in the footnotes of historians. Note also, e.g. the focus of Levasseur and Reimann, ‘Comparative Law’, esp. 1, 13, 15, on scholarship in Law schools with only a passing reference to History departments; also D. Ibbetson, ‘What Is Legal History a History of?’, in Lewis and Lobban (eds.), Law and History , 33–40, at 34. There are exceptions amongst those writing on comparative legal history; e.g. Heirbaut, ‘Comparative Law’, 147; M. Lobban , ‘ The Varieties of Legal History ’, Clio@Thémis , 5 ( 2012 ), 1 – 29 , at 19, 21–2.

8 Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 112, 118; see also 112–13, 119, 120 (‘Comparative legal history must avoid the “surfeit of methodology and self-inspection” that comparative law has borne’), 124, 137. Note also, e.g. Ibbetson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, esp. at 134. For pluralism, note the pertinent comments of D. Kennedy , The Rise and Fall of Classical Legal Thought ( Washington, D.C ., 2006 ), xiv : ‘The point was to add structuralist and critical techniques to the repertoire available for understanding law as a phenomenon too large and messy and complex to be fully grasped within any one theoretical frame.’

9 Such matters of terminology differ between languages. Also very stimulating is J. Gardner , ‘ Legal Positivism: 5½ Myths ’, American Journal of Jurisprudence , 46 ( 2001 ), 199 – 227 .

10 A point also made e.g. by Michalsen, ‘Methodological Perspectives’, 98, and Ibbetson, ‘What Is Legal History?’, 34. Differing conceptions of history will likewise affect our understanding of and approach to the subject.

11 See e.g. R. Gordon , ‘ Critical Legal Histories ’, in his Taming the Past: Essays on Law in History and History in Law ( Cambridge , 2017 ), 220–81 , at 229–30.

12 E. Ehrlich , Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law , trans. W. L. Moll ( Cambridge, MA , 1936 ) , on which see, e.g. S. P. Donlan, ‘Comparative? Legal? History? Crossing Boundaries’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , 78–95, at 85–6. For ‘relative autonomy’, see, e.g. E. P. Thompson , Whigs and Hunters ( London , 1975 ), 258–69 ; Kennedy, Rise and Fall, x, 2; Gordon, ‘Critical Legal Histories’, 224, 248–53, 266.

13 F. W. Maitland, ‘The Law of Real Property’, in Collected Papers , ed. Fisher, I. 162–201, at 175–6 (the word about which he is talking here is feudalism).

14 Thompson, Whigs and Hunters , 261. Other metaphors include, for example, the ‘stickiness’ of legal rules, and also ‘transplant’, on which see below, 13–16.

15 Here comparative legal history may feed back into theories about law; note, e.g. M. Lobban , ‘ Legal Theory and Legal History: Prospects for Dialogue ’, in M. Del Mar and M. Lobban (eds.), Law in Theory and History ( Oxford , 2016 ), 3 – 21 . For relevant discussion of other issues that may be described as ones of ‘legal theory’, note J. Whitman, ‘The World Historical Significance of European Legal History: An Interim Report’, in Pihlajamäki et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of European Legal History , 3–21.

16 See e.g. J. Austin , The Province of Jurisprudence Determined , ed. W. E. Rumble ( Cambridge , 1995 ), 18 , 106 (the opening of Lectures I and V).

17 Note P. Bourdieu , ‘ The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Legal Field ’, Hastings Law Journal , 38 ( 1987 ), 805–53 . More specifically legal historical comments appear in D. Freda, ‘Legal Education in England and Continental Europe between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , 242–66.

18 A. W. B. Simpson , ‘ The Common Law and Legal Theory ’, in his Legal Theory and Legal History: Essays on the Common Law ( London , 1987 ), 359–82 , at 361–2. See also, e.g. J. H. Baker , The Law’s Two Bodies: Some Evidential Problems in English Legal History ( Oxford , 2001 ) . Simpson sees this as true of the period in England from the late medieval development of the Inns of Court up to the mid-nineteenth century, when expansion of the legal profession, numerically, geographically and socially, ended the dominance of this caste. Yet elements of his point remain true today, at least within particular areas of the legal profession; note the interviews in the University of St Andrews project ‘The Law’s Two Bodies’: http://ilcr.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/institute-projects/the-laws-two-bodies/ .

19 See Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 117–18, for a helpful summary and references; also e.g. Modéer, ‘Abandoning the Nationalist Framework’, 109. Note also Kennedy, Rise and Fall , 27, defining his notion of ‘legal consciousness’ as ‘the particular form of consciousness that characterizes the legal profession as a social group, at a particular moment. The main peculiarity of this consciousness is that it contains a vast number of legal rules, arguments, and theories, a great deal of information about the institutional workings of the legal process, and the constellation of ideals and goals current in the profession at a given moment.’

20 E.g. Michalsen, ‘Methodological Perspectives’, 96, 98. Cognate issues arise with studies of comparative law as well as legal history.

21 E.g. Lobban, ‘Varieties of Legal History’; Ibbetson, ‘What Is Legal History?’.

22 Ibbetson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 132.

23 Ibbetson, ‘What Is Legal History?’, 34.

24 Note e.g. Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, esp. 128–31, 138; Donlan, ‘Comparative? Legal? History?’, 83; Kennedy, Rise and Fall , xxvii. A further highly pertinent critique is provided by P. Legrand , e.g. in his ‘ On the Unbearable Localness of the Law: Academic Fallacies and Unseasonable Observations ’, European Review of Private Law , 1 ( 2002 ), 61 – 76 , esp. 63–4, 66 . On the significance of the specific context for court decisions that will assume a major, differently contextualised place in the internal history of law, see A. W. B. Simpson , Leading Cases in the Common Law ( Oxford , 1995 ) ; external context, specific or general, may be particularly important to decisions in the type of difficult case that may drive Common law development, and to the later utilisation of those decisions.

25 D. Hay (ed.), Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England ( London , 1975 ) . Ibbetson, ‘What Is Legal History?’, 33, distinguishes ‘legal history’ and ‘history of law’. The discussion here does not exhaust possible types of legal history; see also, e.g. below, 10–11, on structures of legal thought. Another type is ‘presentist’ legal history, on which see e.g. D. V. Williams , ‘ Historians’ Context and Lawyers’ Presentism: Debating Historiography or Agreeing to Differ ’, New Zealand Journal of History , 48 ( 2014 ), 136–60 ; see also Whitman, ‘World Historical Significance’; Heirbaut, ‘Comparative Law’, 143–8; Lobban, ‘Varieties of Legal History’, 24–5; Zimmermann, ‘Savigny’s Legacy’, esp. 598–601. For a critique of certain forms of presentism, helpfully formulated in terms of the ‘instrumental impulse’, see Legrand, ‘Unbearable Localness’.

26 On problems of terminology, see, e.g. J. Vandelinden, ‘Here, There and Everywhere … or Nowhere? Some Comparative and Historical Afterthoughts about Custom as a Source of Law’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History, 140–66. Developing interest in comparative legal history is linked to, but not identical with, developing interest in global perspectives, with its broadening of geographical perspectives, emphasis on interconnectedness, and questioning of assumed concepts and values; see esp. T. Duve , ‘ European Legal History – Concepts, Methods, Challenges ’, in T. Duve (ed.), Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches ( Frankfurt am Main , 2014 ), 29 – 66 , esp. 30–1, 55, 56; also T. Duve, ‘Global Legal History: Setting Europe in Perspective’, in Pihlajamäki et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of European Legal History , 115–38. Note further G. Frankenberg , Comparative Law as Critique ( Cheltenham , 2016 ).

27 See esp. Watson, Legal Transplants ; Duve (ed.), Entanglements in Legal History . The word ‘transplant’ for the introduction of English laws to Scotland was already used three centuries earlier by Sir Mathew Hale in his The History of the Common Law of England ( London , 1713 ), 200 .

28 See below, 13–16; see also, e.g. W. Swain, ‘The Common Law and the Code Civil : The Curious Case of the Law of Contract’, in Moréteau et al. (eds.), Comparative Legal History , 379–99.

29 See below, 12–13, on causation.

30 Note also, e.g. Michalsen, ‘Methodological Perspectives’, 106–7.

31 For problems with ‘legal systems’ as a basis for comparison, see, e.g. Gordley, ‘Comparative Law and Legal History’, 761–4, Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 114–16.

32 Note, e.g. S. F. C. Milsom , The Natural History of the Common Law ( New York , 2003 ).

33 E.g. Milsom, Natural History ; Buckland and McNair, Roman Law and Common Law , xxi. Note also E. Conte , Diritto comune ( Bologna , 2009 ) . On broad generalisation, see also Duve, ‘European Legal History’, 45. For caution as to the extent of decline in influence of evolutionary assumptions and models, see e.g. Gordon, ‘Critical Legal Histories’, 225–7, 231–4. For an invigorating reassertion of the importance of the broad generalisation and comparison, see Whitman, ‘World Historical Significance’. For pertinent comments on non-legal historians using anthropomorphic and other metaphors, see E. A. R. Brown , ‘ The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe ’, American Historical Review , 79 ( 1974 ), 1063–88 , at 1075–6.

34 Wickham, Problems in Doing Comparative History , 11–15, reaches a similar conclusion.

35 Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 120.

36 E.g. Freda, ‘Legal Education’.

37 See J. G. H. Hudson , The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Volume 2: 871–1216 ( Oxford , 2012 ), 533 , for the possible wider consequences of this point.

38 Note Y. Thomas , ‘ Présentation ’, Annales HSS , 50 ( 2002 ), 1425–8 , at 1425–6.

39 H. S. Maine , Dissertations on Early Law and Custom ( London , 1883 ), 389.

40 S. F. C. Milsom , The Legal Framework of English Feudalism ( Cambridge , 1976 ) , esp. 37; Milsom, Natural History .

41 Kennedy, Rise and Fall , xiv, and also, e.g. viii, ix–xi, xiii, xxxiv, 3, 5, 6, 7, 16–17, 21, 26, 27, 43, 192–3, 205, 208–9, 250–1, 256–7.

42 Ibbetson, ‘What Is Legal History?’, 36–9; Hudson, Oxford History , 375. Exploration of a different but sometimes related kind of competition may start with R. Cover , ‘ Nomos and Narrative ’, Harvard Law Review , 97 ( 1983 ), 4 – 68 . Note also Ibbetson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 136: ‘A further facet of the level of legal doctrine … is the degree to which it allows a substantial measure of indeterminacy.’

43 F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland , The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I , 2nd edn, reissued with a new introduction by S. F. C. Milsom, 2 vols. ( Cambridge , 1968 ), vol. I, cvi .

44 See e.g. D. Osler , ‘ The Myth of European Legal History ’, Rechtshistorische Journal , 16 ( 1997 ), 393 – 410 . To the medieval English legal historian, familiar with the resounding baronial expression of preference for ‘English laws’ over Canon law on the issue of whether subsequent marriage of parents legitimised children born before marriage, it comes as a salutary awakening to find the Orléans jurist Jacques de Revigny mentioning a similar local preference for ‘our laws’ (iura nostra) on this issue; K. Bezemer , What Jacques Saw: Thirteenth-Century France through the Eyes of Jacques de Revigny, Professor of Law at Orleans ( Frankfurt am Main , 1997 ), 5, 11 ; cf. e.g. J. G. H. Hudson , The Formation of the English Common Law: Law and Society in England from King Alfred to Magna Carta , 2nd edn ( London , 2018 ), 206 .

45 Note Maitland’s response to a request that he write a chapter on the early modern reception of Roman law in Germany: ‘I have seen just enough to know that the subject, if it is to be made interesting, is beset by enormous difficulties. For instance the writer would be expected to say whether Roman law really harmed the peasantry, and that is a matter about which I dare not give any opinion. No one ought to have any opinion about it who does not know the economic position of the German peasants before and after the Reception, and even such a one would be in great danger of arguing from post to propter if he did not know France and England also’; The Letters of Frederic William Maitland , ed. P. N. R. Zutshi (Selden Society, Supplementary Series, xi, London, 1995), no. 174 .

46 The advantages of using clearly comparable bodies of source material are clear in, e.g. P. R. Hyams , ‘ The Common Law and the French Connection ’, Anglo-Norman Studies , 4 ( 1982 ), 77 – 92 , 196–202. Note also Wickham, Problems in Doing Comparative History , 5; Donlan, ‘Comparative? Legal? History?’, 84.

47 Note also Gordon, ‘Critical Legal Histories’, 237.

48 See e.g. Gordley, ‘Comparative Law and Legal History’, 763–6, 770; Gordon, ‘Critical Legal Histories’, 237–43; Ibbetson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 143–5. Note further M. Lobban , ‘ The Politics of English Law in the Nineteenth Century ’, in P. Brand and J. Getzler (eds.), Judges and Judging in the History of the Common Law and Civil Law ( Cambridge , 2012 ), 102–37 .

49 Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 110.

50 Note, e.g. Gordon, ‘Critical Legal Histories’, 243, 248, 270–2; Ibbetson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 141–2; and, in particular for construction of analytical narrative, Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 128, 130–1, 136, 138.

51 Dyson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 110: ‘the comparative link will help historians to appreciate the role of chance in legal development’. Also Ibbetson, ‘Comparative Legal History’, 139–40 (including use of the word ‘capricious’).

52 A. W. B. Simpson , ‘ The Rule in Wheeldon v. Burrows and the Code Civile ’, Law Quarterly Review , 83 ( 1967 ), 240–7 , at 240.

53 This is not to suggest that laws introduced with considerable thought for their place in their respective legal framework cannot also lack consistency and coherence.

54 Below, 87.

55 Below, 117.

56 For example, Cecchinato’s essay on Blackstone’s use of Civil law principles to address issues arising from the largely customary nature of English law may lead us to ask whether we can see this as a transplant of legal ideas. See below, 140–160.

57 Below, 261.

58 Below, 223.

59 See below, 289.

60 See below, 304.

61 See below, 22.

62 See below, 130.

63 Maitland, ‘Why the History of English Law is Not Written’, 486.

64 Below, 176.

65 Above, 11.

66 Below, 174.

67 Below, 247.

68 Below, 248.

69 Below, 249.

70 See above, 10–11.

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• By John Hudson , William Eves
• Edited by William Eves , University of St Andrews, Scotland , John Hudson , University of St Andrews, Scotland , Ingrid Ivarsen , University of Cambridge , Sarah B. White , University of St Andrews, Scotland
• Book: Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law
• Online publication: 01 April 2021
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108955195.001

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42 Comparative Law and Private International Law

Mathias Reimann is Hessel E. Yntema Professor of Law, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Published: 18 September 2012
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This article claims that comparative law and private international law (conflict of laws) have long had an intimate relationship. Traditionally, comparative law has interacted with private international law in three basic dimensions which can loosely be termed academic, legislative, and judicial. Comparative law has made private international law the object of scholarly study; it has assisted in the making of private international law rules; and it has provided a method for the application of existing conflicts norms. Recently, however, the emergence of supra-national legal orders has had a significant impact on the relationship between these disciplines, which are now jointly facing the challenges posed by the coexistence of overlapping legal regimes on multiple levels. These challenges can only be met through even greater cooperation than in the past.

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The American Society of Comparative Law

The nation’s premier learned society devoted to the comparative study of legal systems and traditions.

AN ASCL PUBLICATION

The American Journal of Comparative Law

Published by ASCL, The American Journal of Comparative Law (AJCL) is the world’s leading publication dedicated to comparative law. The peer-reviewed journal is published quarterly, and features top scholarship by the field’s leading voices.

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From our latest issue

Volume 71, Issue 4, Winter 2023

No Peace Without Punishment? Reintegrating Islamic State “Collaborators” in Iraq 

Mara R Revkin and Kristen Kao

Reasonableness as Responsiveness in Administrative Law in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada: Kant and Arendt on the Role of the Community in Deferential Judicial Review

Graham Mayeda

The Legal Metaverse and Comparative Taxonomy: A Reappraisal

Online YCC Panel (21 October 2024): Constitutional Court Resilience and Resistance Vis-à-vis De-democratization

The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) is pleased to announce an online panel on “Constitutional Court Resilience and Resistance Vis-à-vis De-democratization.” The panel will be held on 21 October 2024 from 4:45-6:15 P.M. CEST. The schedule is as follows: Constitutional Court Resilience and Resistance Vis-à-vis De-democratization Chair: Ágnes Kovács…

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Call for Panel and Paper Proposals 2024

Innovation and Sustainability: Comparative Law for a Better World October 17-19, 2024 Texas A&M University School of Law, Fort Worth, Texas The American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL), the leading organization in the United States promoting the comparative study of law, and Texas A&M University School of Law invite all interested scholars, practitioners, and advanced…

Call for Nominations – 2024 Buxbaum Prize for Teaching in Comparative Law

The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) invites nominations, including self-nominations, for the annual Richard M. Buxbaum Prize for Teaching in Comparative Law. The YCC created the Buxbaum Prize in the summer of 2014 in honor of Professor Richard M. Buxbaum, the 2014 recipient of the ASCL Lifetime Achievement Award.…

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Studies in Comparative Law Book Series

ASCL Studies in Comparative Law publishes volumes that broaden theoretical and practical knowledge about the world’s laws, legislation, and legal institutions of every kind. These studies raise the level of legal understanding by encouraging a more sophisticated conversation about fundamental legal questions, from a comparative perspective.

See all our books

October 2023

Separation of Powers and Antitrust

Vincent Martenet

Research & Teaching Resources

Teaching comparative law is a rewarding, but challenging task. The following teaching resources may help new and seasoned teachers to develop their own syllabi and other teaching materials. If you would like to provide additional resources to continue growing this list, please contact us or let us know at  [email protected] .

Scholarship Library

Current comparative law scholarship in the form of journal articles, books, and book chapters. Covers relevant topics from all over the world.

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This repository of syllabi and other pedagogical materials is a valuable source for anyone teaching courses on comparative and foreign law.

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Online institutional networks for scholars interested in learning about the professional ‘practice’ of comparative law in various settings.

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Foreign & Comparative Law

The constrained override: canadian lessons for american judicial review.

Chapter Five

Introduction

Court Reform

On Constructing a Stronger Right to Strike Through Comparative Labor Law

• David J. Doorey

Notwithstanding the Right to Strike:  A Canadian Province Defies the Constitution — And Workers Strike Back

• Tascha Shahriari-Parsa

Is a Science of Comparative Constitutionalism Possible?

• Madhav Khosla

Case Decision 2021-004-FB-UA

Oversight Board Finds a Facebook's Rule Application Violates International Human Rights Law

Same Surname Case

Japanese Supreme Court Holds That Forcing Couples to Share a Surname is Constitutional

Fedotova v. Russia

European Court of Human Rights Holds That Russia Must Give Legal Recognition to Same-Sex Couples

Legal Responses to Black Subordination, Global Perspectives

• Kevin E. Davis

Uber Technologies Inc. v. Heller

Supreme Court of Canada Targets Standard Form Contracts.

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Ancient roots of law

Role of judges, 19th-century beginnings, international efforts, microcomparison, macrocomparison, classification of families of law, historical and cultural comparisons, commercial uses, aid to national law, use in international law.

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comparative law , examination of comparative legal systems and of the relationships of the law to the social sciences.

Historical development of comparative law

The expression comparative law is a modern one, first used in the 19th century when it became clear that the comparison of legal institutions deserved a systematic approach, in order to increase understanding of foreign cultures and to further legal progress. From early times, however, certain scholars and researchers have made use of the comparative technique, conscious of the advantages to be gained.

In the 6th century bce according to legend , the Greek lawgiver Solon , faced with the task of compiling the laws of Athens, gathered together the laws of various city-states. Similarly, in the 5th century bce , a Roman commission was reported to have consulted the statutes of the Greek communities in Sicily before giving Rome the famous Laws of the Twelve Tables . Aristotle , in the 4th century, is said to have collated the constitutions of no fewer than 158 city-states in his effort to devise a model constitution . Thus, from ancient times it would seem that those wishing to set up a just system have sought inspiration and example from abroad. The true expansion of comparative law, however, was hindered by a number of obstacles—such as the parochialism of social groups, contempt for foreigners, or “barbarians,” and belief in the sacredness or everlasting inviolability of inherited legal rules.

Although certain practices and institutions that crept into Roman law undoubtedly originated in the imperial provinces, Roman legal science took no cognizance of comparative law. Nor can the medieval universities in Europe be said to have displayed great concern for comparative law . Over the centuries, their interest was limited to Roman law, supplemented in certain areas or modified to some extent by canon law . While members of the first school of thought (called glossators ) confined themselves to the task of elucidating the meaning of the Roman codes of law, their successors (the postglossators ) undertook the systematic arrangement and adaptation of that law to prevailing social conditions. At no time was there an effort to compare laws. The customary laws that one found here and there could hardly hold any interest for scholars labouring to give society a model of ideal justice and to discover or elucidate a higher law above humankind’s making. Indeed, in their opinion, local laws were no more than rubbish and evidently doomed to decay. To compare these local practices would have been a waste of time; to compare them with Roman laws would have been almost indecent.

Such contempt was not characteristic of the attitude of the judges and lawyers whose duty it was to administer justice , mainly by applying the customary law. Their material contained areas of uncertainty and required adaptation to social needs. In the work of ascertaining the content of a custom, and in the task of filling the gaps of customs, judge or lawyer had to consider which customs to allow to prevail. In so doing, he had to decide whether one custom was more just than another and how far he should go in introducing concepts of ideal justice (based on Roman law) that were being promoted by the universities. Two processes were thus at work: the elimination of conflicting local customs and the acceptance and rejection of elements of Roman law. With regard to the first process, the comparative aspects of the work took place behind the scenes, and consequently the results of melding the different local or municipal laws are known, but the reasoning leading to the result is not. With regard to the second process, by contrast, certain publications place the act of comparison in full view. This was particularly noticeable in England , where some writers—such as Sir John Fortescue in the 15th century and Saint-Germain in the 16th—took upon themselves the comparison of common law and Roman law, and in 1623 Sir Francis Bacon suggested to James I that a work be drafted comparing English and Scots law , as a preliminary step toward the unification of the two systems.

Despite the occasional use of the comparative technique, nevertheless, comparative law itself was not recognized as a separate branch or as a fundamental technique of legal science until the 19th century. In particular, it played no part in legal education . It was quite unthinkable that the pursuit of justice should be taught by reference to a host of customary rules that were incomplete, sometimes archaic , and generally regarded as barbaric. A foundation of ethical and political principles rather than sociological considerations, an appeal to reason rather than a study of human behaviour or judicial precedent—these were deemed the true criteria of progress.

With the coming of the 19th century, codification of the law put an end to the dualism existing in many countries between an ideal system, as taught in the universities, and the laws that were applied in everyday practice. Codification of those everyday laws gave them the status of a national law, thoroughly purged of anachronisms and arranged in a systematic manner. That codified law became the cornerstone of legal education. This promotion of local customs, regarded henceforth as being fully consonant with natural justice, may be considered as the underlying cause of the appearance and rise of comparative law.

In short, the attitude toward comparative law tends to change when a country makes its national law the object of legal study and law students begin contrasting it with foreign counterparts. In Europe this dawning change was evident early in the 19th century. Legal periodicals were founded in Germany in 1829 and in France in 1834 to further a systematic study of foreign law. In France, the civil and mercantile laws of modern states were translated with “ concordances ” referring to the corresponding provisions of the French codes; and in England in 1850–52, Leone Levi published a work entitled Commercial Law, Its Principles and Administration; The Mercantile Law of Great Britain Compared with Roman Law and the Codes or Laws of 59 Other Countries .

A chair of comparative legislation was set up in 1831 in the Collège de France; and this was followed, in 1846, by a chair of comparative criminal law in the University of Paris . In 1869 the Société de Législation Comparée was founded in France, followed in 1873 by the Institut de Droit International and the International Law Association. In England, the Society of Comparative Legislation was founded in 1895, and the Quain Professorship of Comparative Law was created at London University in 1894. Similarly, chairs in comparative law were founded and projects in foreign law undertaken all over the continent of Europe, but with particular vigour in France.

The 19th century drew to a close with an important event—the meeting of the First International Congress of Comparative Law in Paris in 1900. Experts from every part of Europe delivered papers and discussed the nature, aims, and general interest of comparative law. Particular emphasis was laid on its role in the preparation of a “common law for the civilized world,” the contents of which would be laid down by international legislation. The stress, however, was on comparative legislation and codification because (with the exception of one English jurist) the congress had attracted only jurists from continental European countries, all of which had coded law, in contrast to English customary, or common, law. Consequently, the idea of an enacted world law was the natural outcome of its proceedings.

The upheavals resulting from World War I (1914–18) prompted a change in direction. From then on, European interest began to extend beyond the continental systems themselves, first, to those of the common-law countries (chiefly England and the United States ), then still further afield to the socialist systems, and finally, after 1945, to the laws of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa. The new territory for legal study that was thus opened up resulted in references to comparative law, rather than to comparative legislation.

Methodological considerations in contemporary comparative law

The world contains a vast number of national legal systems. The United Nations brings together representatives of more than 190 states, but these states are far outnumbered by legal networks, since not all states—notably federal ones—have accomplished unification within their own frontiers. It is thus an enormous task to try to compare the laws of all the different jurisdictions. This problem, however, should not be overly magnified. Differences between the diverse systems are not always of the same order; some are sharp; others are so closely similar that a specialist in one branch of a legal “family” often may easily extend his studies to another branch of that family. For this reason, one can distinguish two types of research in comparative law. The exponent of “microcomparison” analyzes the laws belonging to the same legal family. By observing their differences, he will decide whether they are justified and whether an innovation made in one country would have value if introduced elsewhere. The researcher pledged to “macrocomparison,” on the other hand, investigates those systems differing most widely from each other in order to gain insight into institutions and thought processes that are foreign to him. For the “pure jurist,” concerned mainly with legal technicalities, microcomparison holds the greater attraction; whereas macrocomparison is the realm of the political scientist or legal philosopher, who sees law as a social science and is interested in its role in government and the organization of the community .

Microcomparison demands no particular preparation. The specialist in one national system is usually qualified to study those of various other countries of the same general family. His chief need is access to bibliographical material. In the United States, each state has its own statutes and, to some purposes, its own common law. Thus, the American lawyer must be a microcomparatist as he takes the 50 state systems and the federal law into daily account in his practice of the law. The same is true, to a large extent, of the Australian, or Indian, or Kenyan lawyer, who must take into account not only his own national system but also the laws of England and of other common-law jurisdictions in the Commonwealth. Whatever can be said of the common-law systems holds largely true for the Roman-law and socialist families. French comparative law students encounter little difficulty in contrasting the laws of certain countries, so long as they confine their study to French, German, Italian, and Dutch law, which are related in tradition and structure and serve a similar type of society.

The situation differs greatly in consideration of macrocomparison. Here no comparison is possible without previously identifying and thoroughly mastering the fundamentals of the law systems as they differ from place to place. The jurist must, as it were, forget his training and begin to reason according to new criteria. If he is French, English, or American, he must recognize that in some folk societies of East Asia , the upright citizen never crosses the threshold of a courtroom and acknowledges no subjective rights; instead, the citizen’s behaviour is governed by rites handed down from his ancestors, ensuring him the approval of the community. Likewise, if the Western jurist is to understand Islamic law or Hindu law, he must realize that the law is contained in rules of conduct laid down by a religion for its followers, and for its followers only. These rules, creating obligations and not rights, rank above all worldly matters and, in particular, are not to be confused with the regulations that a national government may, at a given time, enact and ratify. Further, in comparing his system of law with that of a communist country, the Westerner must remember that on no account does the citizen of a Marxist-Leninist state regard the rule of law as an ideal for society. Far from it, for his dream is to see law—which to him is synonymous with injustice and coercion—wither away in an affluent society founded on human solidarity and fellowship. A considerable shifting of legal gears is necessary before a French or German jurist can grasp the vital importance that the English or American lawyer traditionally attaches to the concept of due process and the rules of evidence; in continental eyes, procedural rules take second place to substantive law.

The specialist of macrocomparison also picks out the structural differences existing between certain systems . Accordingly, the Anglo-American lawyer must be aware of the importance of the distinction between public and private law—between law involving the state and law involving only individuals. The jurist in a Roman-law country must, conversely, appreciate the significance of the concepts of common law (unwritten customary law of various kinds) and equity (the use of injunctions and other equitable remedies), neither of which have counterparts in his own system. The lawyer from a centralized country must familiarize himself with the distinction between federal law and the laws of secondary jurisdictions (states, provinces, cantons, and so forth)—a distinction that is of fundamental importance in many countries. If he is from a country like England or France that acknowledges the sovereignty of the national parliament, he must give due weight to the prominence of constitutional law in countries that permit courts to review the constitutional validity of legislative acts—especially in countries such as the United States and Germany. The jurist in a “bourgeois” country must appreciate the policy of collective ownership of means of production in socialist states.

The terms microcomparison and macrocomparison, reflecting the language of economics , are in keeping with the idea that legal systems can be grouped into families, such as common-law, Roman, and socialist. But it must be acknowledged that the number of identifiable families and the appropriate classification of a given system are questions always open to argument. The legal system of a given country, for instance, may exhibit some features that relate it to a particular family and others that may escape that classification. Such blurring of distinctions is particularly true of law in countries of Africa and the Middle East , where certain sectors of the law have been transformed by Western ideas (as in criminal and mercantile law and procedure) leaving other sectors (such as personal status, family law , and land law) faithful to traditional principles of the region. The phenomenon is not peculiar to those countries, however.

Wide differences also may be detected between legal systems that are commonly regarded as belonging to the same family. American law, for instance, without hesitation is ranked as a member of the common-law family; yet countless differences set it apart from English law, in large part because the United States has a federal and England a unitary system of government.

Purposes of comparative law

First of all, there has been a tendency to view comparative law from the standpoint of its value to the historical study of legal decision making—a consideration that was responsible for establishing the first chairs of comparative law in 19th-century Europe. Ideas regarding the place of law in society and the nature of the law itself—whether divine or secular , whether dealing with substantive or procedural rules—obviously become appreciably clearer when comparative law is joined to historical research. Indeed, to some extent historical background may aid in forecasting the future of certain national systems

A closely related consideration prompts many Western jurists, political scientists, and sociologists to acquaint themselves with non-Western methods of reasoning. Comparative studies reveal that the citizen of some countries of Asia and Africa looks upon the concept of a just social order with thoughts and feelings far removed from those of Westerners. The notions of a rule of law and of rights of the individual—fundamental to Western civilization—are not wholly recognized by those societies that, faithful to the principle of conciliation and concerned primarily with harmony within the group, do not favour excessive Western-style individualism or the modern Western ideal of legal supremacy. Thus comparative law may enable statesmen, diplomats, and jurists to understand foreign points of view, and it may frequently help to create better international understanding.

Comparative law may be used for essentially practical ends. The business executive , for instance, needs to know what benefits he may expect, what risks he may run, and generally how he should act if he intends to invest capital or make contracts abroad. It was with this purpose in mind that the first French institute of comparative law was set up in Lyon in 1920; its mission was to instruct French legal advisers on foreign trade . It was this practical aspect that also encouraged the growth of comparative law in the United States, where the essential aim of the law school has been usually to turn out practitioners; and one need hardly mention the strong link in Germany between big industry and the various institutes of comparative law. Sometimes it is said that studies with such a focus should not be considered a part of comparative law, but practical considerations certainly have helped to finance and promote the development of comparative legal studies in general.

The improvement of national legislation was the prime consideration during the 19th century in countries that were codifying or recodifying their legal systems. Numerous later additions to the Code Napoléon , drawn up in 1804, for instance, were of foreign origin. Many other countries, of course, followed France’s lead and introduced into their own systems elements of the French Napoleonic codes and institutions of French public law. It is well worth noticing that a book on French administrative laws was published in German by Otto Mayer before Mayer felt himself able to write a textbook on German administrative law .

The foreign inspiration of a number of legal rules or institutions is a well-known phenomenon, sometimes so all-embracing that one speaks of “ reception”—reception, for instance, of the English common law in the United States, Canada , Australia , India, and Nigeria; reception of French law in French-speaking Africa, Madagascar, Egypt , and Southeast Asia; reception of Swiss law in Turkey; and reception of both German and French law in Japan , along with even some reception of American common law. The study of comparative law has found a special place in countries where such a reception has occurred.

In modern times the spirit of nationalism has often tended to frustrate the development of an international law that would overcome individual national differences. One task facing statesmen and jurists is to inject new life into this effort, adapting it to the exigencies of the modern world. Those engaging in international trade, for instance, do not know with certainty which national law will regulate their agreements, since the answer depends to a large extent on a generally undecided factor—namely, which national court will be called upon to decide the questions of competence . Thus, the sole lasting remedy would seem to be the development of an international law capable of governing all legal questions outside the jurisdiction of a single state. Such a project can succeed only through the medium of comparative law.

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The loneliness of the comparative lawyer and other essays in foreign and comparative law

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• Preface. Part I: Civil Law and Common Law. 1. On the Convergence (and Divergence) of the Civil Law and the Common Law. 2. Legal Education There and Here: A Comparison. 3. The Public Law
• Private Law Distinction in European and United States Law. 4. How Others Do it: The French and German Judiciaries. 5. Judicial Responsibility in the United States. 6. The French Deviation. Part II: Italian Law. 7. The Italian Style I: Doctrine. 8. The Italian Style II: Law. 9. The Italian Style III: Interpretation. 10. When Courts Collide: Constitution and Cassation in Italy. Part III: Property and Inheritance. 11. Ownership and Estate: Variations on a Theme by Lawson. 12. Toward a Comparative Study of the Sale of Land. 13. The inter vivos Transfer of Land. 14. Policy, Autonomy, and the numerus clausus in Italian and American Property Law. Part IV: What Do Comparative Lawyers Do? 15. Comparative Law and Social Change: On the Origins, Style, Decline and Revival of the Law and Development Movement. 16. Comparative Law and Scientific Explanation. 17. Population, Civil Litigation and Legal Science. 18. Foreign Law as a Problem.
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Essay Papers Writing Online

A comprehensive guide to crafting a successful comparison essay.

Comparison essays are a common assignment in academic settings, requiring students to analyze and contrast two or more subjects, concepts, or ideas. Writing a comparison essay can be challenging, but with the right approach and guidance, you can craft a compelling and informative piece of writing.

In this comprehensive guide, we will provide you with valuable tips and examples to help you master the art of comparison essay writing. Whether you’re comparing two literary works, historical events, scientific theories, or any other topics, this guide will equip you with the tools and strategies needed to create a well-structured and persuasive essay.

From choosing a suitable topic and developing a strong thesis statement to organizing your arguments and incorporating effective evidence, this guide will walk you through each step of the writing process. By following the advice and examples provided here, you’ll be able to produce a top-notch comparison essay that showcases your analytical skills and critical thinking abilities.

Understanding the Basics

Before diving into writing a comparison essay, it’s essential to understand the basics of comparison writing. A comparison essay, also known as a comparative essay, requires you to analyze two or more subjects by highlighting their similarities and differences. This type of essay aims to show how these subjects are similar or different in various aspects.

When writing a comparison essay, you should have a clear thesis statement that identifies the subjects you are comparing and the main points of comparison. It’s essential to structure your essay effectively by organizing your ideas logically. You can use different methods of organization, such as the block method or point-by-point method, to present your comparisons.

Additionally, make sure to include evidence and examples to support your comparisons. Use specific details and examples to strengthen your arguments and clarify the similarities and differences between the subjects. Lastly, remember to provide a strong conclusion that summarizes your main points and reinforces the significance of your comparison.

Choosing a Topic for Comparison Essay

When selecting a topic for your comparison essay, it’s essential to choose two subjects that have some similarities and differences to explore. You can compare two books, two movies, two historical figures, two theories, or any other pair of related subjects.

Consider selecting topics that interest you or that you are familiar with to make the writing process more engaging and manageable. Additionally, ensure that the subjects you choose are suitable for comparison and have enough material for analysis.

It’s also helpful to brainstorm ideas and create a list of potential topics before making a final decision. Once you have a few options in mind, evaluate them based on the relevance of the comparison, the availability of credible sources, and your own interest in the subjects.

Remember that a well-chosen topic is one of the keys to writing a successful comparison essay, so take your time to select subjects that will allow you to explore meaningful connections and differences in a compelling way.

Finding the Right Pairing

When writing a comparison essay, it’s crucial to find the right pairing of subjects to compare. Choose subjects that have enough similarities and differences to make a meaningful comparison. Consider the audience and purpose of your essay to determine what pairing will be most effective.

Look for subjects that you are passionate about or have a deep understanding of. This will make the writing process easier and more engaging. Additionally, consider choosing subjects that are relevant and timely, as this will make your essay more interesting to readers.

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when finding the right pairing. Sometimes unexpected combinations can lead to the most compelling comparisons. Conduct thorough research on both subjects to ensure you have enough material to work with and present a balanced comparison.

Structuring Your Comparison Essay

When writing a comparison essay, it is essential to organize your ideas in a clear and logical manner. One effective way to structure your essay is to use a point-by-point comparison or a block comparison format.

Whichever format you choose, make sure to introduce your subjects, present your points of comparison, provide evidence or examples to support your comparisons, and conclude by summarizing the main points and highlighting the significance of your comparison.

Creating a Clear Outline

Before you start writing your comparison essay, it’s essential to create a clear outline. An outline serves as a roadmap that helps you stay organized and focused throughout the writing process. Here are some steps to create an effective outline:

1. Identify the subjects of comparison: Start by determining the two subjects you will be comparing in your essay. Make sure they have enough similarities and differences to make a meaningful comparison.

2. Brainstorm key points: Once you have chosen the subjects, brainstorm the key points you want to compare and contrast. These could include characteristics, features, themes, or arguments related to each subject.

3. Organize your points: Arrange your key points in a logical order. You can choose to compare similar points side by side or alternate between the two subjects to highlight differences.

4. Develop a thesis statement: Based on your key points, develop a clear thesis statement that states the main purpose of your comparison essay. This statement should guide the rest of your writing and provide a clear direction for your argument.

5. Create a structure: Divide your essay into introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Each section should serve a specific purpose and contribute to the overall coherence of your essay.

By creating a clear outline, you can ensure that your comparison essay flows smoothly and effectively communicates your ideas to the reader.

Engaging the Reader

When writing a comparison essay, it is crucial to engage the reader right from the beginning. You want to hook their attention and make them want to keep reading. Here are some tips to engage your reader:

• Start with a strong opening statement or question that entices the reader to continue reading.
• Use vivid language and descriptive imagery to paint a clear picture in the reader’s mind.
• Provide interesting facts or statistics that pique the reader’s curiosity.
• Create a compelling thesis statement that outlines the purpose of your comparison essay.

By engaging the reader from the start, you set the stage for a successful and impactful comparison essay that keeps the reader engaged until the very end.

Point-by-Point vs Block Method

When writing a comparison essay, you have two main options for structuring your content: the point-by-point method and the block method. Each method has its own advantages and may be more suitable depending on the type of comparison you are making.

• Point-by-Point Method: This method involves discussing one point of comparison at a time between the two subjects. You will go back and forth between the subjects, highlighting similarities and differences for each point. This method allows for a more detailed and nuanced analysis of the subjects.
• Block Method: In contrast, the block method involves discussing all the points related to one subject first, followed by all the points related to the second subject. This method provides a more straightforward and organized comparison but may not delve as deeply into the individual points of comparison.

Ultimately, the choice between the point-by-point and block methods depends on the complexity of your comparison and the level of detail you want to explore. Experiment with both methods to see which one best suits your writing style and the specific requirements of your comparison essay.

Selecting the Best Approach

When it comes to writing a comparison essay, selecting the best approach is crucial to ensure a successful and effective comparison. There are several approaches you can take when comparing two subjects, including the block method and the point-by-point method.

The block method: This approach involves discussing all the similarities and differences of one subject first, followed by a thorough discussion of the second subject. This method is useful when the two subjects being compared are quite different or when the reader may not be familiar with one of the subjects.

The point-by-point method: This approach involves alternating between discussing the similarities and differences of the two subjects in each paragraph. This method allows for a more in-depth comparison of specific points and is often preferred when the two subjects have many similarities and differences.

Before selecting an approach, consider the nature of the subjects being compared and the purpose of your comparison essay. Choose the approach that will best serve your purpose and allow for a clear, organized, and engaging comparison.

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Tolyatti: A Russian Homage To Italy

This is the curious story of a Russian city named after an Italian politician, Palmiro Togliatti.

“Togliatti” by Shine Phantom is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This is the curious story of a russian city named after an italian politician, palmiro togliatti.

There are cities which were made great by men, and men which have been made great by a city. This is the case of Palmiro Togliatti — a founding member and the longest serving secretary of the Italian Communist Party — and a Russian city located in Samara Oblast, known as Stavropol on Volga until 1964, which was then renamed Tolyatti, becoming the greatest tribute in the world to an Italian politician. The city of Tolyatti was named after him immediately after his death in Yalta — a seaside town in the then Soviet Union — on August 21st, 1964, as a result of a sudden stroke and cerebral bleed. He was on vacation, on his way to give his support for Brezhnev as Khrushchev’s successor.

Who was Palmiro Togliatti?

If you happen to travel around Italy, you may have noticed that in every Italian city — however big or small — there is a street named after Palmiro Togliatti. That’s because Togliatti was not just the charismatic secretary and one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, but a legendary figure of Italian and international politics. He started his political career before World War I, joining the Italian Socialist Party in 1914, then serving as a volunteer, and returning home to Turin after being injured. During this period he learned about the Russian Revolution and became fascinated, wanting to bring soviet ideas to Italy. He became a founder of the Communist Party of Italy, which was a part of Communists International (Comintern). In fact, after the end of Fascism — during which he spent almost 17 years in Moscow, becoming one of the highest representatives of the Comintern with the blessing of Stalin — he came back to Italy as Deputy Prime Minister until 1945 and taking part in the Constituent Assembly until 1948, writing the current constitution of the Italian Republic. Under his political and intellectual leadership — enough to be nicknamed ‘The Best ’ — the Italian Communist Party would become the largest non-ruling party in Europe and the second in Italy, after the Christian Democracy, which was consistently the most popular Italian party until 1992, when the Cold War ended and the danger of a ‘ Soviet ’ turning point in Italy was warded off.

Nevertheless, the Communist Party ruled by Togliatti had a big influence in Italian society, especially regarding culture, and achieved great results in local elections within particular regions of Italy. Togliatti chose to become a Soviet Union citizen in 1930, in fact giving up Italian citizenship. What may have seemed like complete devotion to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its General Secretary Joseph Stalin, clashes with his next choice of refusing the head of the Communist Information Bureau proposed by Stalin himself in 1951, preferring to remain General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party. Throughout his career he supported his communist beliefs but fought to bring them to his beloved home country of Italy. Palmiro Togliatti wanted to fulfill his dream of a communist plan through democracy: the original ‘ Italian way to Socialism’.

Tolyatti, the Russian city

The Russian homage to Palmiro Togliatti was not chosen at random. In fact, a significant city was named after him: Stavropol on Volga became Tolyatti ( Togliatti Russianized) because right there — on the banks of Volga river — the Italian politician had a key role in building the popular AvtoVAZ factory, the manufacturer of the Lada car brand. And thus, in the 1960s, through cooperation with FIAT , the city took a new shape and a new name, because the old Stavropol on Volga was also covered by the Kuybyshev Hydroelectric Station. This infrastruscture was crucial for the development of a large industry. Therefore Tolyatti — just like what happened in Italy with Turin — became the working-class city par excellence, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made it a great vehicle for propaganda and experimentation. Many facilities were built, especially for sports, and new parks and monuments emerged in Tolyatti, which were made to represent the perfect Soviet city for the perfect Soviet citizen.

Not surprisingly, many popular athletes grew up in Tolyatti, such as the Olympic champion Alexei Nemov and the former ice hockey players Alexei Kovalev, Ilya Bryzgalov, Viktor Kozlov and Alexei Emelin. As you might imagine, ice hockey is very popular around there, and the local club sponsored by Lada is one of the best across Russia. Tolyatti, due to its vast spaces, has several monuments of national interest : Victory Park, a memorial dedicated to the Soviet victory in World War II built in the Auto Factory district; Liberty Square with its Obelisk of Glory dedicated to the fighters of World War II; the Mourning Angel standing in Central Park, a memorial to victims of political repression built after the end of the Communist era. Also the Transfiguration Cathedral, with its wonderful golden domes, was built after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tolyatti was also the city where the great Russian painter Ilya Repin stayed for a brief period in 1870, painting his masterpiece ‘ Barge Haulers on the Volga’. The house where he stayed then became a monument.

Last but not least, among the most meaningful monuments of Tolyatti is ‘ Loyalty’. It is a bronze statue dedicated to a faithful dog, called ‘ Kostya’, who survived a car accident in which its owners lost their lives. Like what happened in Japan with Hachiko, Kostya wouldn’t give up, waiting for its owners for seven consecutive years at the same spot. Under the snow and the rain, winter and summer, the dog stayed there, running up to all the passing cars and hoping one day to again see its beloved masters. Only his own death let him abandon his spot, but Tolyatti citizens unanimously wanted to honor the loyalty of Kostya, building a sculpture in his memory. I could say no place was more appropriate than Tolyatti, because the city’s namesake itself represents a great metaphor of loyalty: that of Palmiro Togliatti to the Soviet Union.

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Administrative and municipal status

City divisions, transportation, culture, education, and sports, parks and monuments, october 2007 bomb attack, organized crime, violent crimes, local government, twin towns – sister cities, partner cities, notable people, external links.

The city is best known as the home of Russia's largest car manufacturer AvtoVAZ ( Lada ). For this reason, Tolyatti is often dubbed "Russia's motor city" or "Russia's Motown" (in reference to Detroit in the United States —the spiritual home of the American automotive industry). It was renamed after Italian communist politician Palmiro Togliatti in 1964. [11]

Stavropol was founded as a fortress in 1737 by the Russian statesman Vasily Tatishchev . [12] It was often informally referred to as Stavropol-on-Volga to distinguish it from Stavropol , a larger city in southwest Russia, although Stavropol-on-Volga was never its official name. [13] [14]

The construction of the Kuybyshev Dam and Hydroelectric Station on the Volga River in the 1950s created the Kuybyshev Reservoir , which flooded the existing location of the city, and it was completely rebuilt on a new site.

In 1964, the city was chosen as the location of the new VAZ automobile plant: a joint venture between Fiat and the Soviet government. It was then renamed Tolyatti after Palmiro Togliatti , the longest-serving secretary of the Italian Communist Party , who had been instrumental in setting up the venture with Fiat. Much of the modern city was constructed in the 1960s to house the workers of the factory, and today AvtoVAZ dominates the economy of the city. [15]

Within the framework of administrative divisions , Tolyatti serves as the administrative center of Stavropolsky District , [1] even though it is not a part of it. [16] As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as the city of oblast significance of Tolyatti —an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts . [2] As a municipal division , the city of oblast significance of Tolyatti is incorporated as Tolyatti Urban Okrug . [3]

For the administrative purposes, the city is divided into three districts:

• Avtozavodsky ( Автозаво́дский ), also called Novy Gorod (literally New City ), is the most modern; it was designed to host the workers of the city's AvtoVAZ factory, home of the Lada car;
• Tsentralny ( Центра́льный ), also called Stary Gorod (lit. Old City ), home of the city government and industrial center;
• Komsomolsky ( Комсомо́льский ), the oldest district, built to house Hydroelectrical Plant builders.

The city's main claim to fame has been automobiles Lada ( Zhiguli ) manufactured by AvtoVAZ car plant employing some 110,000 people: in cooperation with Italy's Fiat since 1970, with General Motors since 2001 [17] and with the Renault-Nissan Alliance since 2012, and once again becoming an independent, state-owned enterprise in 2022.

Other industries have moved into Tolyatti because it is close to abundant supplies of electricity and water. Petrochemicals are well represented in the city. Among the significant enterprises based there are " TogliattiAzot " (Russia's biggest ammonia manufacturer headed [ when? ] by Sergei Makhlai ) and " KuibyshevAzot " (a nitrogen fertilizer manufacturer and Russia's biggest caprolactam and polyamide producer). Other industries include building materials production, ship repair and electrical equipment and electronics. [ citation needed ]

In 2011 the Tolyatti Special Economic Zone was launched in order to develop the region further and diversify the economy of the city. Several auto-component producers (German Mubea and Japanese Sanoh among them) have since been registered, as well as large industrial manufacturers ( Praxair and Edscha ). By November 2012 the value of project investment totalled 10 billion Rubles and around 3000 jobs were being created. [18]

The transport system is well developed in the city. Public transport includes municipal buses and trolley-buses, and so-called "alternative" (commercial) transport or marshrutkas .

External transport routes are provided by two bus stations, two railway stations and a city harbour. Tolyatti has its airport as well, but it is used by personal aircraft only (the nearest international airport, Kurumoch , is located 40   km away, towards Samara ). The city is linked to the federal road network by the M5 "Ural" highway . [ citation needed ]

The creation of the Kuybyshev Reservoir in the 1950s destroyed much of the city's history, so almost all the city's cultural points of interest date from the Soviet period, but the city administration has continued to build new monuments and cathedrals. A recent notable event was the 1998 opening of the large Tatishchev Monument near the Volga . The Transfiguration Cathedral was completed in 2002.

Education is represented by over one hundred public and ten private schools, as well as several higher education institutions. Most notable ones include:

• Togliatti State University ( Тольяттинский государственный университет, ТГУ )
• Volga Region State University of Service ( Поволжский государственный университет сервиса, ПВГУС )
• Tatishchev University of Volga ( Волжский университет имени В. Н. Татищева, ВУиТ )
• Togliatti Academy of Management ( Тольяттинская академия управления, ТАУ )

• AvtoVAZ Technical Museum
• Tolyatti museum of local lore

In the eyes of the Soviet leaders, Tolyatti was a perfect Soviet city (since most population migrated here during the construction of AvtoVAZ factories)   – many sports facilities appeared so that the "perfect Soviet person" could be healthy. The city has high-quality sports facilities: gymnasiums, swimming pools, ice arenas, association football and racing stadiums   — as a result, many athletes, including Olympic Champion Alexei Nemov , Stanley Cup winners Alexei Kovalev and Ilya Bryzgalov had moved to Tolyatti. Former Montreal Canadiens defenseman Alexei Emelin , and former Washington Capitals winger Viktor Kozlov and defenseman Alexei Tezikov were born there. Daria Kasatkina , a professional tennis player, was born there. [19]

Tolyatti is represented in almost every kind of team sports. Tolyatti's Lada-sponsored Ice Hockey Club broke the Moscow teams' domination of the game. The Lada women's football team has won the Russian championship several times   — and the Lada women's handball team, who are the Russian and European Champions, is the core for Russian national women's handball. Men's football ( FC Lada Togliatti ), basketball and handball teams also take part in national championships. As for the traditional national sport of Russia, bandy , there is a team founded in 2013, TOAZ, [20] which however only takes part in a recreational league.

Mega-Lada Togliatti who race at the Anatoly Stepanov Stadium are a record 17-times champions of Russia . [21]

Tolyatti has many parks, and many of these contain monuments of cultural, historical, and aesthetic interest. Examples include Victory Park with its Victory Monument and other monuments, Liberty Square with its Obelisk of Glory and other monuments, Central Park with its Mourning Angel (a memorial to victims of Soviet repression), large statue of Lenin , and other monuments, and other parks.

And there are other monuments outside the parks. The City Duma has been energetic in creating or designating historical and cultural monuments, ranging from the colossal equestrian Tatishchev Monument to the tumbledown Repin House and a monument to a faithful dog , and many other types.

There are a number of local newspapers published in Tolyatti: Ploshchad Svobody , Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye ( Tolyatti Observer ), business newspaper "Monday" ("Ponedelnik"), Volny Gorod , Gorodskiye Vedomosti , and a few others. In the end of the 1990s, Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye published a series of articles on a local crime group. The stories drew attention to the group's connections with the local police. [22] [23] Subsequently, Togliatti Review saw two of its editors (Valery Ivanov and Alexei Sidorov) killed in 2002–2003. [24] [25] [26] [27]

The only local-born FM-band radio station is Radio August   [ ru ] at 70.64 and 102.3   MHz.

Tolyatti is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city. Most religious people in the city are of the Orthodox Christian faith. Muslims are the second largest group of believers. [28] Also in the city are organizations of almost all major religions: Old Believers , Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Buddhists and others.

During the morning rush hour of 31 October 2007, a bomb exploded on a passenger bus in the city, killing at least eight people and injuring about 50 in what Irina Doroshenko, a spokeswoman for the investigative wing of the local prosecutor's office, said could be a terrorist attack. [29] At the beginning of the investigation, it was believed to be the work of terrorists from the North Caucasus . [ citation needed ] Early reports indicated possible involvement of Chechen terrorist Doku Umarov . [ citation needed ] However, the officials later named a 21-year-old Evgeny Vakhrushev, who also died in the blast, as the only person to be responsible for the tragedy. [ citation needed ]

The city also has a reputation for gang violence . [30] [31]

The city has witnessed a mafia killing spree: there have been 550 commissioned killings in Tolyatti over 1998–2004, five of those murdered were journalists. [32]

Three chief architects of Tolyatti were victims of violent crimes: Valery Lopatin was shot to death on July 7, 2004, Mikhail Syardin and Aleksander Kiryakov were also injured in violent attacks. [33]

A former city mayor (1994–2000), Sergey Zhilkin   [ ru ] , was murdered on November 15, 2008. [34]

On December   13, 2008, Anatoly Stepanov, a vice-speaker of Duma of Samara Oblast, a former head of administration of Tsentralny City District of Tolyatti in 1991-1997 and Tolyatti mayor candidate in 2004, was attacked on a street and left with serious head injuries. He died in hospital on February   24, 2009. [35]

The city's mayor in 2000–2007, Nikolay Utkin   [ ru ] , was sentenced to seven years in prison on corruption charges. [36] [37] [38]

Mayor Antashev Sergey Alexandrovich was born on December 16, 1959, in the city of Saransk , Mordovia . In 1994 he moved to Tolyatti, was accepted to the post of director of the heating network enterprise of TEVIS. In 2000 he graduated from the International Market Institute with a degree in management. From 2000 to April 9, 2012 - Marketing Director - Energy Sales Director of TEVIS. Deputy of the Duma of the city district of Togliatti IV (from 2005 to 2009) and V (from 2008 to 2012) convocations. From April 2012 to February 2015, he served as deputy mayor of the city of Tolyatti on urban economy. On April 12, 2017, the Tolyatti City Council appointed Sergey Antashev as the mayor of the city. [39]

On March 4, 2021, Igor Ladyka was appointed acting mayor of the Togliatti city district, in connection with the resignation of Sergei Antashev. [40]

On April 30, 2021, Nikolai Rentz took office as head of the Togliatti city district. [41] [42] The inauguration ceremony was attended by the Governor of the Samara Region Dmitry Azarov. [43] [44]

Tolyatti is twinned with: [45]

• Bo Andersson , (born 1955), CEO of AvtoVAZ
• Varvara Bakhmeteva (1815–1851), Mikhail Lermontov's love interest and muse
• Vasily Banykin (1888–1918), chairman of the executive committee of the city after the October Revolution
• Ilya Bryzgalov (1980) Former NHL goalie who won the Stanley cup in 2007
• Artyom Dubinin (born 1989), professional ice hockey player [46]
• Denis Gurianov (born 1997), ice hockey player
• Daria Kasatkina (born 1997), professional tennis player
• Valentina Stupina , (1920–1943), pilot
• Vasily Tatishchev (1686–1750), founder of the city
• Alexei Nemov , (born 1976), Olympic champion in Artistic gymnastics

• ↑ Russian: Ста́врополь , IPA: [ ˈstavrəpəlʲ ] . Also referred to as Stavropol-on-Volga ( Ста́врополь-на-Во́лге , Stávropol-na-Vólge ) or Stavropol-Volzhsky ( Ста́врополь-Во́лжский ).

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• 1 2 3 Государственный комитет Российской Федерации по статистике. Комитет Российской Федерации по стандартизации, метрологии и сертификации.   №ОК 019-95   1 января 1997 г. « Общероссийский классификатор объектов административно-территориального деления. Код   36 240 », в ред. изменения №278/2015 от   1 января 2016 г.. (State Statistics Committee of the Russian Federation. Committee of the Russian Federation on Standardization, Metrology, and Certification.   # OK 019-95   January   1, 1997 Russian Classification of Objects of Administrative Division (OKATO). Code   36 240 , as amended by the Amendment   # 278/2015 of   January   1, 2016. ).
• 1 2 3 4 Charter of Samara Oblast
• 1 2 3 4 Law #189-GD
• ↑ Почта России. Информационно-вычислительный центр ОАСУ РПО. ( Russian Post ). Поиск объектов почтовой связи ( Postal Objects Search ) (in Russian)
• ↑ Выписка из реестра Российской системы и плана нумерации Archived April 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine , Федеральное агенство связи (Россвязь) / ABC code plan by Rossvyaz (Federal Communications Agency of Russia)
• ↑ Russian Federal State Statistics Service. Всероссийская перепись населения 2020 года. Том 1 [ 2020 All-Russian Population Census, vol. 1 ] (XLS) (in Russian). Federal State Statistics Service .
• ↑ Russian Federal State Statistics Service (2011). Всероссийская перепись населения 2010 года. Том   1 [ 2010 All-Russian Population Census, vol.   1 ] . Всероссийская перепись населения 2010   года [2010 All-Russia Population Census] (in Russian). Federal State Statistics Service .
• ↑ Federal State Statistics Service (May 21, 2004). Численность населения России, субъектов Российской Федерации в составе федеральных округов, районов, городских поселений, сельских населённых пунктов   – районных центров и сельских населённых пунктов с населением 3   тысячи и более человек [ Population of Russia, Its Federal Districts, Federal Subjects, Districts, Urban Localities, Rural Localities—Administrative Centers, and Rural Localities with Population of Over 3,000 ] (XLS) . Всероссийская перепись населения 2002   года [All-Russia Population Census of 2002] (in Russian).
• ↑ Всесоюзная перепись населения 1989   г. Численность наличного населения союзных и автономных республик, автономных областей и округов, краёв, областей, районов, городских поселений и сёл-райцентров [ All Union Population Census of 1989: Present Population of Union and Autonomous Republics, Autonomous Oblasts and Okrugs, Krais, Oblasts, Districts, Urban Settlements, and Villages Serving as District Administrative Centers ] . Всесоюзная перепись населения 1989   года [All-Union Population Census of 1989] (in Russian). Институт демографии Национального исследовательского университета: Высшая школа экономики [Institute of Demography at the National Research University: Higher School of Economics]. 1989 – via Demoscope Weekly .
• ↑ "Office of the Mayor: History and geography" . Archived from the original on March 10, 2012.
• ↑ "История / О Тольятти / Администрация городского округа Тольятти" .
• ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF) . Archived from the original (PDF) on December 10, 2012 . Retrieved December 1, 2019 . {{ cite web }} : CS1 maint: archived copy as title ( link )
• ↑ "Русская семья со шведской фамилией / Православие.Ru" . www.pravoslavie.ru .
• ↑ "АвтоВАЗ" запустил предсерийное производство Lada Vesta NG
• ↑ Государственный комитет Российской Федерации по статистике. Комитет Российской Федерации по стандартизации, метрологии и сертификации.   №ОК 019-95   1 января 1997 г. « Общероссийский классификатор объектов административно-территориального деления. Код   36 440 », в ред. изменения №278/2015 от   1 января 2016 г.. (State Statistics Committee of the Russian Federation. Committee of the Russian Federation on Standardization, Metrology, and Certification.   # OK 019-95   January   1, 1997 Russian Classification of Objects of Administrative Division (OKATO). Code   36 440 , as amended by the Amendment   # 278/2015 of   January   1, 2016. ).
• ↑ "Home" . www.lada-owners-club.co.uk .
• ↑ "Особая экономическая зона "Тольятти" " . oeztlt.ru .
• ↑ "Daria Kasatkina | Player Stats & More – WTA Official" .
• ↑ "Информация о команде "ТОАЗ" Самарская область - Реестр - Федерация хоккея с мячом России" . rusbandy.ru .
• ↑ "Russian Team Championship" . Speedway History . Retrieved April 8, 2024 .
• ↑ Togliatti Journal; Gathering News in This New Russia Can Be Fatal , Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 16 May 2002.
• ↑ How the Togliatti Observer Was Born Excerpt from "That's How It Happened", Togliatti Observer, 11 April 2002.
• ↑ Newspaper Editor Killed , Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, 11 October 2003.
• ↑ Court acquits suspect in Togliatti editor's murder Ann Cooper, Committee to Protect Journalists, 12 October 2004.
• ↑ The Togliatti Murders: 'They Can't Kill Us All' Committee to Protect Journalists, 15 September 2009.
• ↑ UNESCO Condemns Assassination of Russian Journalist Alexei Sidorov UNESCO Press Release 2003-80.
• ↑ "Информационный сервер Тольятти-Новости" .
• ↑ Bomb on Russian Bus Kills at Least 8 , Michael Schwirtz, New York Times, 1 November 2007.
• ↑ Eight killed in Russia bus blast BBC, 31 October 2007.
• ↑ Криминальная история Тольятти Crime history of Tolyatti.
• ↑ Russian journalism comes under fire Paul Jenkins, BBC, 2 July 2004.
• ↑ В Тольятти новый главный архитектор Archived April 20, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Tolyatti has a new chief architect, TLT.ru, April 10, 2009. (in Russian)
• ↑ "Togliatti State University: We are mouring" . Archived from the original on March 10, 2012 . Retrieved August 27, 2010 .
• ↑ Загадки убийства Степанова Mysteries in assassination of Stepanov, TLTgorod.ru. (in Russian)
• ↑ Togliatti Mayor Suspected of Extorting 4-Storey House Archived September 16, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Pavel Sedakov, Kommersant, 17 August 2007.
• ↑ Mayoral Elections Criticized After Arrest Archived March 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Natalya Krainova, The St. Petersburg Times, 2 March 2010.
• ↑ "Экс-мэр Тольятти Николай Уткин осужден на семь лет" . February 12, 2008.
• ↑ "Общая информация / Администрация городского округа Тольятти / Структура администрации / Власть / Администрация городского округа Тольятти" . tgl.ru .
• ↑ "Igor Ladyka appointed Acting Head of the city of Togliatti" . tgl.ru . March 4, 2021 . Retrieved July 8, 2022 .
• ↑ Дмитрий Азаров уверен, что у Николая Ренца получится конструктивный диалог с тольяттинцами City Traffic (in Russian). April 30, 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2023
• ↑ "Новый мэр Тольятти приступает к работе" . April 30, 2021.
• ↑ "Николай Ренц вступил в должность главы Тольятти" . April 30, 2021.
• ↑ "Губернатор поздравил Николая Ренца со вступлением в должность мэра Тольятти" . April 30, 2021.
• ↑ "Города побратимы" . tgl.ru (in Russian). Tolyatti . Retrieved February 4, 2020 .
• ↑ Tolyatti profile and statistics at KHL.ru
• Самарская Губернская Дума.   №179-ГД   18 декабря 2006 г. «Устав Самарской области», в ред. Закона №6-ГД от   11 января 2016 г.   «О внесении изменений в Устав Самарской области». Вступил в силу   1   января 2007   г. Опубликован: "Волжская коммуна", №237 (25790), 20 декабря 2006 г. (Samara Governorate Duma.   # 179-GD   December   18, 2006 Charter of Samara Oblast , as amended by the Law   # 6-GD of   January   11, 2016 On Amending the Charter of Samara Oblast . Effective as of   January   1, 2007.).
• Самарская Губернская Дума.   Закон   №189-ГД   от   28 декабря 2004 г. «О наделении статусом городского округа и муниципального района муниципальных образований в Самарской области», в ред. Закона №23-ГД от   30 марта 2015 г.   «Об осуществлении местного самоуправления на территории городского округа Самара Самарской области». Вступил в силу   по истечении десяти дней со дня официального опубликования. Опубликован: "Волжская коммуна", №247, 31 декабря 2004 г. (Samara Governorate Duma.   Law   # 189-GD   of   December   28, 2004 On Granting the Status of Urban Okrug and Municipal District to the Municipal Formations in Samara Oblast , as amended by the Law   # 23-GD of   March   30, 2015 On the Implementation of Local Self-Government on the Territory of Samara Urban Okrug of Samara Oblast . Effective as of   after ten days from the day of the official publication.).
• Official website of Tolyatti
• Official website of Tolyatti (in Russian)
• Interactive map of Tolyatti (in Russian)
• Togliatti State University
• Togliatti Academy of Management
• Volga Region State University of Service
• Volzhsky University after V.N. Tatischev
• Ploshad Svobody (in Russian)
• Togliatti Review (in Russian)
• Volny Gorod (in Russian)
• Gorodskiye Vedomosti (in Russian)
• Radio August (in Russian)
• Виртуальный Тольятти (in Russian)
• Information server TLTnews.net
• Главная страница (in Russian)
• TLT.ru - Новости Тольятти | Городской информационный портал (in Russian)
• Soviet postcards: Togliatti, die Autostadt (in German)

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