Hybrid Law and Culinary Metaphor – Empty Coquetting or Something Else?

Abstract

A metaphor is not merely a rhetorical device belonging to certain comparatists’ personal writing style, but it is an intrinsic part of the attempt to think comparatively. Essentially, metaphorising as an act of epistemic simplification has a special place in comparative law. Paper discusses the use of metaphor in comparative law by looking at an example from macro-comparative law by Esin Orucu, who has used culinary terms as metaphors while discussing mixed legal systems. The purpose of the following analysis is to illustrate particular epistemic benefits of using metaphors in comparative legal literature. The paper concludes that metaphors are helpful because they provide points of understanding by making cognitively sense of foreign legal systems and legal hybridities.