1st Workshop: World Comparative Law

Introduction

Led by Mindy Chen-Wishart and Ngoc Son Bui, this book project entitled World Comparative Law seeks to provide an authoritative account of five major issues of comparative law in the global majority, made up of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceana:

• Indigenous Laws, • Religious Laws,

• Colonial Laws,

• Authoritarian Laws, and

• Development Laws.

The book aims to broaden the scope of comparative law in three ways:

1. Global Jurisdictions: the book will expand the jurisdictions covered by comparative law studies beyond the narrow slice of the world dominating current scholarship. Although there are regional and jurisdiction-based studies, there is no systematic study of comparative law, as we propose, across:

Asia ((51jurisdictions, 60% of global population, 30% of global land area),

Africa (54 jurisdictions, 18% of global population, 25% of global land),

Latin America (14 jurisdictions, 5.5% of global population, 12.5% of global land)

Oceania (0.56 global population, about one third of the Pacific Ocean, sometimes considered a continent)

This project will be the first of its kind to cover these regions comprising the global majority (83.5% of the global population). We will necessarily have to be selective in the jurisdictions to represent each continent.

2. Global Themes: the book will go far beyond the conventional focus on private law, and traditional categories of law in general, to examine hitherto under-examined themes that are salient to, and shape, the legal dynamics in these regions. These are indigenization, colonialization, authoritarianism, religion, and development. These generate the five main themes of this book.

3. Global Approaches: the book seeks to expand the approach to comparative law. The book will go beyond the focuses on doctrinal and formalist analysis of judicial decisions and legislation. Our project adopts a post-modernist, inter-disciplinary, and global approach by situating the comparative analysis of laws within the pluralist social context of these jurisdictions, and the dynamics of globalization.

1st Final Program World Comparative Law.pdf (Programme)