Comparative Law as Critique

Günter Frankenberg, Emeritus Professor of Public Law, Philosophy of Law and Comparative Law, Institute for Public Law, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany

• Contents: PART I DISCIPLINE AND CRITIQUE I. Comparative Law as Discipline 2. Critique and Comparison PART II CHARTING THE COMPARATIVE SPACE 3. Navigating the Mainstreams 4. Orientalizing Comparative Law’s Occident 5. Muslim Veiling: Critique of a Comparative Discourse PART III COMPARING HUMAN RIGHTS NARRATIVES 6. Human Rights and Narratives of Justification 7. Before the Law: The Discourse about “Access to Justice” 8. Thick Comparison? Bibliography Index

'Globalisation has made legal comparison fashionable, but in the mainstream varieties practiced within institutional settings or by surviving nineteenth century societes savantes, it involves, at best, a superficial overview of national practices in a quest for similarities (not differences), at worst, an apology of the exclusionary dynamics at work in the act of comparison. While Frankenberg's acutely critical view draws attention to the political and epistemological implications of existing methodologies, it also provides the foundations of a renewed intellectual enterprise, thereby joining the outstanding scholarship of Legrand, Samuel or Monateri in what might be termed ''New Approaches to Comparative Law''.'--Horatia Muir Watt, Sciences-po, France'Comparative Law as Critique should be read by everyone interested or engaged in legal comparison. The intellectual condescension towards those who have not been converted to post-modernism that shines through, typical of the amorphous congregation of crits, must not dissuade established comparatists from taking this book very seriously.'--Journal for European, Private International and Comparative Law'Comparative Law as Critique should be read by everyone interested or engaged in legal comparison. It is not far-fetched to declare that this overview of comparative work in law is more instructive than many a voluminous conventional 'comparative law handbook'.'--Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht