IECL Seminar Series: Global Legal history: What can be compared and how?

Is it possible to compare the laws and legal systems that developed in very different times and places and which have taken very different forms? In this presentation I give some examples of ancient laws, those made in Mesopotamia, China, and India. I hope to show that although they concern similar topics – including murder and theft – their rules cannot usefully be compared at the level of substance and doctrine. Nevertheless, considering these laws side by side raises larger and more general, even theoretical, questions. This can shed light on such issues as the role of laws in societies, who makes law, and why the do so.