The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Law

The book delves into the 'deeper structures' of the world's legal systems, where law meets culture, politics and socio-economic factors.

To understand a legal system, we first need to understand the cultural, political, socio-economic context which grounds and surrounds its law. This book aims to provide the reader with the fundamental knowledge of this dynamic relationship.We can only claim to understand another legal system when we know the context surrounding the positive law in which lawyers are trained. To avoid ethnocentricity and superficiality, we must go beyond judicial decisions, doctrinal writings and the black-letter law of codes and statutes and probe the 'deeper structures' where law meets cultural, political, socio-economic factors. It is only when we acquire such awareness and knowledge of the critical factors affecting both the backgrounds and implications of rules that it becomes possible to control the present and possibly future developments of the world's legal institutions. This collection of essays aims to provide the reader with a fundamental understanding of the dynamic relationship between the law and its cultural, political and socio-economic context.