Method?

It is hardly an exaggeration to think of method as a disciplinary hallmark. No discipline, it seems, can lay claim to intellectual respectability unless it features an accredited method. But comparative law is unusual in as much as it is commonly reduced to a method — and this, by comparativists themselves. In other terms, comparative law would be a strictly methodological endeavour. Indeed, the leading textbook in the field describes comparative law as a “heuristic method of legal science”. Yet, method remains woefully untheorized. Now, does it do more than betray “science envy”? Can it effectively overcome situation (that of the law and that of the comparativist)? Is it in a position to offer epistemological guarantees of any kind? In sum, how, if at all, is it able to contribute to the credentialization of comparative law? Drawing principally on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Feyerabend, I seek to revisit method. The outcome of my interdisciplinary enquiry allows me to review fundamentally the very nature of comparative law and to overcome common assumptions that are no longer sustainable.