The Import of New Disciplinary Approaches in Comparative Legal Research: Legal Linguistics, Legal Translation & Socio-Legal Studies
The Import of New Disciplinary Approaches in Comparative Legal Research: Legal Linguistics, Legal Translation & Socio-Legal Studies

Summary/Abstract: In the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law, 2nd edition, Vivian Grosswald Curran pertinently asserts that “[t]he study of language is a cognitive model for comparative law. Language’s own dependence on translation is instructive in understanding comparative law in terms of the contrasting categories that undergird the civil and common law legal systems. Comparative law is situated between deeply entrenched, mutually contradictory aspirations of universalism and pluralism. […] Comparative law’s effectiveness as a translator of the foreign depends on how well its acquired skills and methods can be adapted to new kinds of foreignness”. As discipline and research instrument, comparative law has become crucially important in studies with a focus on multilingual law, in general and contemporary legal conceptualism, in particular. However, current international legal research signals a shift towards a more blended working methodology, particularly in those studies concerning aspects of legal conceptualism at the intersection between different legal systems and legal languages. This means that, in order to produce comprehensive comparative legal works, research must open up to a whole new set of niche methodologies and combined approaches. This paper will take argumentative view of legal linguistics, legal translation and socio-legal studies as instruments of research which, alongside comparative law methodologies, help fill in some of the gaps in current studies of legal conceptualism.

• Details
• Contents