Preface

Abstract

Comparative law and legal history are witnessing a remarkable moment of reorientation in their methods and perhaps even in their disciplinary identities. Historically linked to and emerging from a shared paradigm of historical jurisprudence, both disciplines have developed their own institutions, canons of knowledge, mechanisms of communication, and academic practices over the last century. Both flourished under the juridical nationalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this national paradigm has shaped their analytical framework and categories. Both disciplines are now also facing similar challenges due to the transnationalization of their object and of their institutional structures, but also due to the broad recognition of the importance of context and traditions. Consequently, both are increasingly situating their research on a global horizon, and both are endeavoring to decentralize their approaches and to expose themselves to new notions of law and justice.1 This situation suggests that there should be renewed dialogue between the two disciplines, but it also leads us to question what shape such a dialogue might take. What can they learn from each other?