A Brief History of Legal Comparison: A Lesson from the Ancient to Post-Modern Times

Abstract

This essay offers a reconstruction of the historical evolution of legal comparison from the ancient to post-modern times. In particular, the author wishes to focus on the most important legal scholars and their contribution to the creation and development of comparative law and its methodology. Comparison of rules or constitutions has ancient origins and every age has left a legacy. For this reason, the Author has divided this essay into nine periods: the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the Nineteenth Century, from the Congress in Paris, 1900, to the first half of the Twentieth Century; the second half of the Twentieth Century. To claim legal comparison as the result of its history is also to acknowledge that most of the today’s scholars have learned the lesson of the ancients masters of legal comparison.