Monateri, Pier Giuseppe --- "Methods in Comparative Law: An Intellectual Overview" [2012] ELECD 577; in Monateri, Giuseppe Pier (ed), "Methods of Comparative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Methods of Comparative Law

Editor(s): Monateri, Giuseppe Pier

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802529

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Methods in Comparative Law: An Intellectual Overview

Author(s): Monateri, Pier Giuseppe

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

1. Methods in comparative law: an intellectual overview
Pier Giuseppe Monateri



1. INTRODUCTION
In this chapter I explore the dominant paradigm ­ meant as a purposive system of thought
­ which has inspired my research in the field of Comparative Law. Tracing back the roots
of my intellectual path as a comparatist scholar, I meet with a specific methodology known
as the `formant approach'. Consequently, in the following pages I move from this kind of
approach to revise the standard comprehension of comparativism in general and compara-
tive law in particular.
To reach my goal, I divide the chapter into two sections. The first is a brief summary of
the basic tenets of this kind of approach to Law, in order to introduce the reader to the steps
to be followed in using this method. The second is devoted to applying the formant
approach with the aim of both dismantling the ideological substrate veiled by conventional
views and discovering the deeper potentialities of Comparative Law. This kind of
`aletheic' operation, meant as the generative source of the interpretative tradition, allows
me to discuss and to reassess three main issues:

1. the nature of Comparative Law as academic discipline and its aim of providing tools
for global governance of the legal field in today's world;
2. the process of definition of Legal Origins and law reforms made by the World Bank;
3. the Jurisprudential implications of this approach.


2. THE BASIC METHOD OF THE `FORMANTS APPROACH' IN
COMPARATIVE LAW
The theory of ...