Foreign Law Inspiring National Law: Lessons from Greatorex v. Greatorex

The author focuses on the voluntary use by judge or counsel of foreign law and foreign legal ideas as a means of shaping national law when this is unclear, contradictory, or otherwise in need of reform, as distinct from the formal presentatin of foreign law through expert witnesses where such law has to be applied. The number of instances in which this kind of borrowing may happen must, of necessity, be limited. The problem is that foreign law is unlikely to come in a simple form, attractively packaged; and language is a major problem in judicial attempts to be inspired by a foreign idea if not to transplant the actual solution. This has led the author to advocate a more co-ordinated use of the different talents that judges, practitioners, and academics bring to the process of creating and interpreting law and to assist the process by provision, in the English language, of easily accessible accounts of relevant foreign material. The approach finds an excellent practical illustration in the judgment of the High Court in Greatorex v. Greatorex

NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY OR INTELLECTUAL ARROGANCE? THE CURRENT ATTITUDE OF AMERICAN COURTS TOWARDS FOREIGN LAW

During the 19th century American law (as, indeed, English law) was open to foreign influences. Foreign creativity was welcomed, not seen as an attempt to interfere with American values and life by telling them how to ordain their affairs. English statutes, mainly on matters of private law, would thus reach the westward expanding United States with a jet lag of anything between 10 and 20 years. Decisions of the highest English courts would also be followed, within about the same period of time, unless local conditions made their adoption undesirable. Occasionally and increasingly local courts also developed the courage to challenge the wisdom of the progenitor system, displaying not only growing intellectual confidence in their own, but also showing the flexibility that is found in societies which have the mixed blessing of a shorter tradition; but when they did so, they invariably felt the need to explain why they chose to go down another path. The reasons given for distinguishing or rejecting the parent model were often informative about both systems. American courts were thus among the first which would allude openly to the policy reasons which dictated their results

The Multicultural Classroom as a Comparative Law Site: A United Kingdom Perspective

This chapter studies the impact of the recent multicultural approach to comparative legal studies on comparative law teaching, with a focus on British debates and literature. I will argue that the multicultural turn of (comparative) legal teaching, reflected for example in a greater diversity of teaching techniques, a greater emphasis on minority issues and law &… disciplines, responds to a multiplicity of motivations. Pedagogically, it is a response to the increasingly diverse backgrounds of students and their differing intellectual starting-points. Pragmatically, it is a means to boost students’ employability and intellectual versality in a job market that now values “cultural awareness skills”. Finally, conceptually, it is a tool designed to unravel the pluralistic nature of law. From these diverse drivers to the multicultural turn in (comparative) legal teaching, it is possible to identify similarities with other recent trends of globalisation and internationalisation of legal education. However, this article will submit that differences remain. Having analysed these differences, I will go on to argue and reveal that in them lie the core features of a multicultural approach to legal teaching and its intrinsic connections to comparative law, as the multicultural classroom itself becomes a comparative law site

Markesinis’s German Law of Torts. A Comparative Treatise

Item does not contain fulltextLXXXIII, 641 p