1. Comparative Law Spring 2002 Professor Susanna Fischer CLASS THREE COMPARATIVE LAW AND LEGAL HISTORY

2. ANNOUNCEMENT The French and German books have come into the bookstore and are now available for purchase. Please make sure that you buy them by early next week.

3. WRAP-UP OF CLASS TWO: AN IMPORTANT THEME TO BEAR IN MIND IMPORTANT THEME: How different are the civil and common law traditions? Are they converging?

4. Is it acceptable for American judges to be monolingual? Markesinis (who speaks excellent German, French, Italian, English and Greek) believes that English judges should learn languages so that they effectively take a comparative approach to the legal problems they confront. What do you think?

5. Comparative Law and Legal History in the United States Comparative Law and Legal History in the United States, 46 American Journal of Comparative Law 1 (1998)

6. Comparing comparatists’ use of history and legal historians’ use of comparative law To what extent do comparatists use legal history? To what extent do legal historians use comparative law?

7. Comparing comparatists’ use of history and legal historians’ use of comparative law “[T]he use comparatists make of legal history is, by and large, routine but very basic while the historians' studies of foreign legal systems are rare but, on the whole, rather thorough.”

8. Why This Difference in Approach Between Comparatists and Legal Historians? “If an historical dimension in comparative law is the rule while comparative or foreign perspectives in legal history are the exception, what explains the difference?”

9. Why This Difference in Approach Between Comparatists and Legal Historians? 1. “[F]or comparative law, an historical dimension is a necessity while for legal history a comparative dimension is a luxury.” 2. Different scholars shaped each discipline: home-grown American legal historians vs. European émigré comparatists with strong historical consciousness 3. Common law, geographical, cultural insularity

10. A New Discipline? Should there be more comparative legal history scholarship and/or teaching in American law schools? Why or why not? What are the difficulties associated with comparative legal history?