Suchergebnisse

One might, by way of introduction, return to the general question. What is one to make of the debate between Professor Birks and the apparent schematic disorder of the common law? One immediate response is to consign this whole debate to a past age. Those who believe that meaningful legal reform can be achieved through classification risk being ridiculed.7Such a view is understandable. The amount of intellectual energy spent on emancipating unjust enrichment from the categories of contract, tort and equity seems to bear little relation to the actual social benefits detectable in the restitution decisions themselves.8And the experimentation with the public and private law dichotomy appears to have proved of little worth in the face of such social horrors as child abuse.9

This article will propose that comparative law as a discipline should now consolidate itself as an independent subject with its own internal structure. This is not to say that its teachers and professors should abandon, or at least fully abandon, their "gift of freedom".1 Nor is it to confuse comparative law with other more specific law subjects which may be taught in a comparative way.2 What this article will propose is that comparative law be envisaged as a subject basically operating at two levels (or consisting of two parts). At one level it consists of the now considerable literature on the subject, including of course the work which envisages the subject in terms of legal families. At another level, however, comparative law should be envisaged as being concerned with the theoretical underpinning of the terms "comparative" and "law". This part, in other words, would deal with these terms as instruments of knowledge. What is it to have knowledge of "law"? And what contribution does "comparison" make to this epistemo-logical question?

Is English Law in the Process of Being Codified ?
Codification supposes a formalised and orderly system of norms, an idea which remains foreign to English law. The basis of the common law consists of causes of action which give a different content to legal concepts depending of the case in hand. The training of lawyers and the limited role accorded to academic scholarship are serious and long-lasting obstacles to any attempts at codification.