Aims of Comparative Law

This chapter determines the aims and uses of comparative law. Comparative law improves communication. This communicative importance of comparative law can directly affect the professional lives of lawyers and can be an essential aid in providing clients with sound advice. Comparative law also prevents the narrow-mindedness which blinds law students to the possibility that legal questions could be solved, or even approached, differently than in their own legal system. Nevertheless, comparative law can provide a deeper understanding of one's own legal system. It can also be a means of interpreting national law. Finally, comparative law becomes particularly important when the common principles of a variety of other legal orders are themselves considered to be a formal source of law in one particular legal system.