"Historical Comparative Law and Comparative Legal History Legal history and comparative law overlap in important respects. This is more apparent with the use of some methods for comparison, such as legal transplant, natural law, or nation building. M.N.S. Sellers nicely portrayed the relationship. The past is a foreign country, its people strangers and its laws obscure.... No one can really understand her or his own legal system without leaving it first, and looking back from the outside. The comparative study of law makes one's own legal system more comprehensible, by revealing its idiosyncrasies. Legal history is comparative law without travel. Legal historians, perhaps especially in the United States, have been skeptical about the possibility of a fruitful comparative legal history, preferring in general to investigate the distinctiveness of their national experience. Comparatists, however, content with revealing or promoting similarities or differences between legal systems, by their nature strive toward comparison. Some American historians, especially since World War II, see the value in this"--

American Political Science Review (APSR) is the longest running publication of the American Political Science Association (APSA). It features research from all fields of political science and contains an extensive book review section of the discipline.

What Americans sought -- What Americans got : deranged laws -- What Americans can do : improve legal methods.