Guido Calabresi, Duncan Kennedy, Franz Werro, Alexandra Braun

This course is an introduction to the comparative study of laws and institutions. Accordingly, it is organized in different teaching blocks. Readings therefore present theoretical articulations and practical applications of the main methodological approaches relied upon by comparative scholars. Participants will become acquainted with the “mechanics”, as well as the broader implications, of the various ways of comparing: functionalism, structuralism, culturalism, postmodern neo-culturalism and critical comparison, and comparative law and economics. Participants will be asked to reflect over the common law-civil law dichotomy and its implications for the debate over economic globalization including projects of harmonization, such as the World Bank’s “Legal Origins” study; the circulation of legal rules and institutions and the export of constitutional models in Eastern Europe and Iraq; the ambiguous relation between US and European cultures.

Guido Calabresi - Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law and Economics

American and Italian nationalities, is one of the “law & economics fathers”, a judge at the New York Federal Court of Appeal, and the Sterling Professor at Yale University.

 

Duncan Kennedy - Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law

American nationality, “founding father” of Critical Legal Studies, is the Carter Professor of Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School.

 

Ugo Mattei - Academic Organization

Professor at Università degli Studi di Torino and an Alfred & Hanna Fromm Distinguished Professor of International and Comparative Law at University of California, Hastings College of Law.

Franz Werro - Visiting Professor of Law

Swiss nationality, is a Professor at the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland and at the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington D.C.

 

Alexandra Braun - Visiting Associate Professor

Lecturer at St. John’s College, Oxford.