Transnational Comparisons: Theory and Practice of Comparative Law as a Critique of Global Governance

21 Pages Posted: 7 Feb 2012 Last revised: 21 Oct 2014

See all articles by Peer C. Zumbansen

Peer C. Zumbansen

McGill University, Faculty of Law; King's College London - The Dickson Poon School of Law

Date Written: February 7, 2012

Abstract

A project seeking to assert and contrast the ‘practice’ of comparative law in distinction from the well-known and longstanding theoretical critique of the field is itself in need to define the meaning of practice. The following chapter, written for a volume edited by Jacco Bomhoff and Maurice Adams, takes up this challenge in two steps. In a first one, it revisits comparative law’s seemingly eternal self-doubt regarding its target of inquiry and its method. I will suggest that there is a great promise for comparative legal studies in the context of transnational legal pluralism as a methodological approach to the study of intersecting normative and institutional orders. In a second step, I would like to draw out the context in which current debates about comparative and transnational law are unfolding. This context- ‘global governance’- poses significant challenges for the role of law in what has fast become a multi-disciplinary inquiry regarding the contours and foundations of a continuously evolving global regulatory landscape. A reflection on the regulatory aims of comparative law as transnational law, which I have been pursuing together with Russell Miller in ‘Comparative Law as Transnational Law: A Decade of the German Law Journal’ (Oxford University Press, 2012), can serve as a powerful critique of global governance.

Keywords: comparative law, comparative constitutional law, practice, transnational law, constitutionalism

JEL Classification: K10, K33

Suggested Citation

Zumbansen, Peer C., Transnational Comparisons: Theory and Practice of Comparative Law as a Critique of Global Governance (February 7, 2012). Osgoode CLPE Research Paper No. 1/2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2000803 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2000803

Peer C. Zumbansen (Contact Author)

McGill University, Faculty of Law ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://https://www.mcgill.ca/law/

King's College London - The Dickson Poon School of Law ( email )

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London, WC2R 2LS
United Kingdom

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