Watt, Gary --- "Comparison as Deep Appreciation" [2012] ELECD 580; 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 4

Section Title: Comparison as Deep Appreciation

Author(s): Watt, Gary

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

4. Comparison as deep appreciation
Gary Watt*



In his 1949 article on `The Field of Comparative Law', F.H. Lawson wrote that compara-
tive law is `bound to be superficial'.1 Some years later Alan Watson acknowledged that
superficiality will always remain a peril in comparative law scholarship.2 What counts as
superficiality? Can we avoid it, and if so, how? An answer lies somewhere in the ongoing
debate on the significance of culture in comparative law. I hesitate to call it a `lively' debate
for we will see that the rival camps have lately established somewhat lodged positions and
that the discourse between them is in danger of becoming as sterile as the no man's land
between warring trenches. On the one side there are scholars who argue that deep
comparative law requires us to appreciate law in its cultural context, and specifically in the
context of cultures, including those of the artist and artisan, which do not carry the label
`legal'. Pierre Legrand stands at the vanguard of that camp. On the other side there are
scholars who are content to compare laws in the context of legal cultures and legal
histories, but see no necessary connection between historically-created laws and the wider
culture in which those laws now reside. Alan Watson is the doyen of that view. Perhaps
there are still those who do not think that culture exerts any influence at all on the practice
and progress of laws. Strict adherents to law and ...