Meeting of the Minds
Subtitle: The Franco-American Origins of Modern Comparative Law, 1900-1940
Contributors: Gordon, Peter E.; Kloppenberg, James T.; Surkis, Judith; Kennedy, Duncan
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Description: This dissertation traces the development of a modern approach to comparative law that arose out of the fin-de-siècle critique of nineteenth-century legal thought in France and the United States. This critique undermined a mode of legal reasoning that assumed the common law and the civil code were internally-coherent and gapless systems of rules from which judges could logically deduce legal outcomes. As rapid social and economic changes swept across the Atlantic World, jurists influenced by reform movements sought to make the law more responsive to changing conditions, while also addressing the problem of legal indeterminacy posed by the critique of deduction.
Notes: Keywords: Comparative Law, France, Intellectual History, United States.

Thesis Ph.D. Harvard University 2013