SG on GS: A Review of Samuel, Geoffrey. An Introduction to Comparative Law Theory and Method. Oxford, Hart, 2014. xvii, 226 pp. ISBN 9781849466431

Mirroring French specialists in French family law or German experts in the German law of obligations or English authorities on the English law of wills, comparatists have tended to orient their legal research towards rules and the interpretation of rules, whether judicial or doctrinal. Not only are theoretical reflections on the practice of comparative law a recent occurrence, but they continue to be of interest to a relatively small number of comparatists only. Inevitably, crucial issues like the relationship between law and culture or the translatability of law, the extent to which an understanding of another law is possible or the objectivity of legal interpretation therefore remain under-theorized within comparative law. In this regard, Geoffrey Samuel’s book, An Introduction to Comparative Law Theory and Method, contributes timely insights to the necessary theoreticization of comparative law. Although Samuel’s monograph has been ‘designed primarily for postgraduate research students whose work involves comparison between legal systems’ (at vii), it must be welcomed by any comparatist who takes comparative legal research seriously. But such earnest comparatist will want to engage with Samuel’s determinations.