Article by David S. Clark
One hundred years after the 1900 Paris International Congress of Comparative Law, it is worth reflecting on what is new in comparative law. In the year 2000, much has changed in the world's political, economic, and social realms. England, France, and The Netherlands lost their colonial empires. (Portugal and Spain had already lost most of theirs in the nineteenth century.) The Soviet Union gained and lost an empire. Germany rose, fell, rose again, fell again, and today, as a reunified state, is the largest member of the European Union. Outside Europe, Japan emerged as the dominant economy in Asia, the United States became the world's most powerful nation, and today China is precariously balanced between two ideologies.
Economically and socially, most of the world has shifted from rural, agricultural societies to urban, service nations. People in general live longer, which creates problems related to the aged, and have more money to spend, which vastly expands market economies. Women in the developed world have been more fully integrated as individuals into regimes of legal opportunities and protection, which has dramatically altered family law. Europe and North America have engaged in a strategy of consolidation to serve various economic, political, and social aims. And so on.
What about comparative law as a discipline? Can it demonstrate developments in its goals, methods, or accomplishments commensurate with the immense social change of the past century? I address this issue by looking at the beginning and end of the twentieth century. First, in Parts I to V, I review several comparative law meetings both before and after the defining 1900 Paris Congress, consider the breadth of their ideas about comparative law, and set those alongside what we do today. One of the meetings I discuss, in Part III, is the United States' first international comparative law congress, which occurred in 1904. Second, in Part VI, I describe one of the important themes of the 1900 Congress—legal harmonization (rapprochement, Angleichung). In this Part, I briefly consider the largest current comparative law enterprise, namely, the collective activity associated with the renewal of a ius commune europaeum. But first, I take a brief look at certain nineteenth-century developments and an important precursor to the 1900 Paris comparative law congress.
About the Author
David S. Clark. Vice President, American Society of Comparative Law; Professor of Law and Director, Comparative and International Law Center, University of Tulsa.
Citation
75 Tul. L. Rev. 871 (2001)