11 mai 2023

Drawing Legal Pictures: The Worldview and its Implication for the Purpose and Method of Comparative Law

Every discipline perceives and constructs the world in its own way: it conceptualizes and structures an aspect or a fragment of (perceived) reality and develops a research program and method(s) that are apt to develop this construction process having in mind a specific vision or mission. One can call such disciplinary perception and construction a “special world picture” of a discipline. Depending on different modes of scientific rationality, this world picture can be seen as the object, subject, or aim of a scientific discipline. In any case, even if not explicitly stated, this construction is a core question of a discipline. In law, various (sub)disciplines such as legal philosophy, legal theory and comparative law have developed different (albeit often mutually influenced) interpretations of the world. One could even argue that there has been competition between the (sub)disciplines for the right or the possibility to define a world picture generally valid for discourse about law.

This symposium intends to create an awareness of the fundamental experience and potential that comparative law possesses when constructing the legal; that is, when conceptualizing the “legal”. Relying on its rich experience, comparative law is well positioned to take into account current developments in the field when (re-)defining its world picture, in order to conceptualize perceptions of law in a truly global perspective. The symposium invites its participants to discuss the dialectics of the Individual/unit (national and/or other legal systems), the Particular/common and the (in)existence of the General/global in the legal world as the material basis of a comparative law world picture.