Glanert, Simone --- "Method?" [2012] ELECD 579; 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 3

Section Title: Method?

Author(s): Glanert, Simone

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

3. Method?
Simone Glanert



Method is a digression.1

It is hardly an exaggeration to think of method as a disciplinary hallmark. No discipline, it
seems, can lay claim to intellectual respectability unless it features an accredited method.
But comparative law seems unusual in as much as it is often reduced to a method ­ and
this, by comparatists themselves for whom comparative law would be a strictly methodo-
logical endeavour. In a remark made on the occasion of a debate at the 1900 international
conference on comparative law in Paris, Frederick Pollock thus defended the view that
`comparative law ... is but the introduction of the comparative method into law'.2 In effect,
it is argued that `[t]he method called [c]omparative [l]aw can be used for a variety of
practical or scholarly purposes'.3 Along converging lines, it is said that `the method of
comparative law' is `not only ... a method of thinking ... but also a method of working'.4
Some comparatists approach the matter in the broadest terms and conceive of comparative
law as a `cognitive method'.5 In the words of a leading British academic, for example,
`"[c]omparative [l]aw" denotes a method of study and research'.6 Other authors draw a
more specific connection between method and scientificity. They point to the fact that
`[c]omparative law ... is the comparative method as applied to the domain of legal



1
Benjamin, Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. John Osborne. New York:
Verso, 1998: ...