Should we learn from other jurisdictions and, if so, how?
Should we? We certainly should learn from other jurisdictions, both in terms of the substantive law and with respect to methods. Engaging in comparative research is a necessary condition of serious legal scholarship. Given the increasing importance of transnational regulation in the European Union and around the world, it is also inevitable. How? See the answer to question 2.
Which measures are most effective to internationalize legal research?
Personally, I have found the most effective way to internationalize my legal research is to internationalize my working environment - in other words, to talk to scholars from other jurisdictions and other parts of the world, In doing this, I not only learn about foreign legal systems, but also about my own. As Proust wrote in “The Prisoner”, “The only true voyage of discovery […] would be not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another […].”
If you were in charge of designing an international legal research agenda, what three topics would be on your list?
- Corporate law and securities regulation in comparative historical perspective.
- Methodology: connecting vertical and horizontal comparisons – the “transnationalization” of comparative law,
- The law, history and economics of fiduciary relationships in comparative perspective.
1/2. What legal article is a good read?
Tamar Frankel, "Fiduciary Law", California Law Review 71 (1983), 795.
