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- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Copyright
- © 1995 by The American Society of Comparative Law, Inc.
- ISSN
- 0002-919X
- eISSN
- 2326-9197
- DOI
- 10.2307/840649
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
ALAN WATSON* Comparative law as an academic discipline is a very personal subject, giving its proponents great liberty to choose their interests. Not surprisingly it produces wonderful, flamboyant scholars, like Ru dolf Schlesinger, who remain forever youthful. His Comparative Law (first edition, Brooklyn, 1950) has been a constant inspiration. For long my own focus on comparative law was on legal borrow 3 4 ings, but I was aware that other general factors were at work. I realized, for example, that for most of the time rulers and govern ments in the Western world as a whole were little interested in mak ing private law. Instead, the task devolved upon some group of the legal elite who became in effect subordinate law makers without hav ing been given power to make law. Thus, Roman jurist s as such were private individuals with no ties to government: they made law when their opinions came to win approval from other jurists. English judges in the Middle Ages and later were appointed to decide cases: the tradition long was that they found the law but did not make it. Continental law professors were appointed to teach law, not make it. But they did
Journal
American Journal of Comparative Law – Oxford University Press
Published: Jul 1, 1995