Global Legal History, Legal Systemology, and the Genealogy of Law

Comparatists in the social sciences are supposed to analyze social phenomena from a static point of view, with no interest in their dynamic aspects. However, this is not true for comparative lawyers, since they are committed to analyzing legal change, which necessarily enhances aspects like the circulation of legal models as well as their transformation due to the variation of the space-time coordinates. The dynamic aspects are of such importance for comparatists that the building of legal families, reflecting a static approach to comparative law, is increasingly questioned in its foundations and capability to detect decisive similarities and differences between legal systems: the evolution within the common law–civil law divide and its connection with the ruling of the economic order. The building of legal families will not be removed from the comparative lawyer agenda, at least in recognition of its didactic function. However, comparative lawyers are increasingly aware of the ideological value of taxonomies and increasingly convinced about the necessity to replace them with genealogies.