Presentation
Comparative Law – Preparatory Study Group Report
The Course: Comparative Law and Legal Cultures
(2009)
Abstract
The paper highlights important aspects of comparative law and comparative research. It gives rise to such questions as the relevance of comparative law for legal research, how much comparative law should be involved in legal research, and whether we perform a comparative study when we analyze the EU law in relation to national law.
Keywords
- Compartive law,
- comparative research,
- legal identities
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring 2009
Citation Information
We make a descriptive comparative study when we look at what the rules in another legal system are, or when we use one legal system to describe the rules in another legal system (for example Swedish law can be used as a prism to describe Danish law).
A comparative study has a normative character when a researcher tries with the help of comparison to answer the questions: “How should the best legal system be?” or “How can we improve the existing law?” The latter approach is especially important when we are to create new legislation.
Sometimes both a comparative descriptive analysis and a comparative normative analysis can be combined. In any case it is important for a researcher that he/she is clear in his/her work what he/she is doing.