Comparative Law: Who is the Elephant in the Room? (Book Review of 'Comparative Law: A Handbook', Örücü and Nelken, eds.)

Abstract:     
In the last two years three important comparative law handbooks have been published ("Comparative Law: A Handbook", ed. by Örücü and Nelken 2007; "The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law", ed. by Reimann and Zimmermann 2006; "Elgar Encyclopaedia of Comparative Law", ed. by Smits 2006). The authors of these handbooks can be regarded as today's leading comparative lawyers. However, one may be wondering whether there is an "elephant in the room" that is missed by all three handbooks. Based on hits in the Westlaw's database WORLD-JLR it can indeed be suggested that two of the most-cited comparatists have been ignored: on the one hand Pierre Legrand, and on the other Rafael La Porta (as a proxy for the new quantitative comparative methodology).

Number of Pages in PDF File: 3

Keywords: comparative law, Pierre Legrand, Rafael La Porta, LLSV, La Porta et al., numerical comparative law, quantitative comparative law, Westlaw

JEL Classification: K00, K30, N40

working papers series