Comparative Legal Reasoning and European Law deals with the use of comparative law in European legal adjudication. It describes the different forms of the use of comparative law in legal reasoning, argumentation and justification in several national legal orders and in European level legal institutions. The book begins with an inquiry into the nature of comparative law as a legal source. After the description of the empirical study it ends to the general theory of European law and several hard cases of European law are examined. The book is intended for students and researchers in European law but it also contains aspects to be taken into account in the practical work in European legal orders and legal institutions by judges and legal practitioners.

The last two decades have witnessed an exponential growth in debates on the use of foreign law by courts. Different labels have been attached to the same phenomenon: judges drawing inspiration from outside of their national legal systems for solving purely domestic disputes. By doing so, the judges are said to engage in cross-border judicial dialogues. They are creating a larger, transnational community of judges. This book puts similar claims to test in relation to highest national jurisdictions (supreme and constitutional courts) in Europe today. How often and why do judges choose to draw inspiration from foreign materials in solving domestic cases? The book addresses these questions from both an empirical and a theoretical angle. Empirically, the genuine use of comparative arguments by national highest courts in five European jurisdictions is examined: England and Wales, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. On the basis of comparative discussion of the practice and its national theoretical underpinning in these and partially also in other European systems, an overreaching theoretical framework for the current judicial use of comparative arguments is developed. Drawing on the author's own past judicial experience in a national supreme court, this book is a critical account of judicial engagement with foreign authority in Europe today. The sober middle ground inductively conceptualized and presented in this book provides solid jurisprudential foundations for the ongoing use of comparative arguments by courts as well as its further scholarly discussion.

This contribution argues that recent Europe-decisions of national constitutional courts demonstrate a new quality of comparative legal reasoning. Whereas classic EU related case-law reflects comparative law dimensions at best by sporadic references to foreign case law, some constitutional courts in Europe have now taken a path towards a more elaborate use of comparative reasoning, including in-depth and sometimes even critical evaluations of foreign jurisprudence in the ratio decidendi. Beyond the traditional motives for courts to rely on comparative law, one particular reason for this intensification seems to be the aim to take an active role in an EU-wide process of shaping a common constitutional law. Seen in a transnational perspective, comparative reasoning by judges can be more than a mere reference to foreign law as such: In fact, the judicial evaluation of foreign Europe-decisions can simultaneously be an evaluation of propositions on common constitutional standards. Comparative reasoning by courts then becomes an active contribution to a transnational dialogue of judges on the making of a common constitutional law in Europe.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Comparative Law: A Very Short Introduction aims to offer a concise introduction to Comparative Law—its objectives, methods, concepts and uses. After an overview of the fundamental definitions, key concepts and basic lexicon of the discipline, the book proposes an analysis of the most successful techniques adopted in legal comparison for mapping the world's legal systems and for explaining legal change and diffusion of law, also giving a concise description of the legal traditions of the world. It also offers an account of the competing approaches adopted over time in comparative endeavours, from functionalism to culturalism and postmodernism, and highlights the different emphasis placed by each of these approaches on commonalities, faith in universal law and convergence, or on divergence and irreducible differences. Finally, the book provides readers with an understanding of the practical use of comparative law, describing how legal comparison is employed both in law-making and in adjudication, supplementing legal reasoning and interpretation. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The European Court of Justice is widely acknowledged to have played a fundamental role in developing the constitutional law of the EU, having been the first to establish such key doctrines as direct effect, supremacy and parallelism in external relations. Traditionally, EU scholarship has praised the role of the ECJ, with more critical perspectives being given little voice in mainstream EU studies. From the standpoint of legal reasoning, Gerard Conway offers the first sustained critical assessment of how the ECJ engages in its function and offers a new argument as to how it should engage in legal reasoning. He also explains how different approaches to legal reasoning can fundamentally change the outcome of case law and how the constitutional values of the EU justify a different approach to the dominant method of the ECJ.

This book examines an unexplored method of interpretation: the use of domestic law in the interpretation of international law.

A large-scale comparative work of leading cases examines judicial constitutional reasoning in eighteen different legal systems globally.