Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law

by Patrick Glenn

Legal Traditions of the World is a prize-winning work that offers a major new means of conceptualizing law and legal relations across the world. National laws are placed in the broader context of major legal traditions, those of chthonic (or indigenous) law, talmudic law, civil law, islamic
law, common law, hindu law and confucian law. Each tradition is examined in terms of its institutions and substantive law, its founding concepts and methods, its attitude towards the concept of change and its teaching on relations with other traditions and peoples. Legal traditions are explained in
terms of multivalent and non-conflictual forms of logic and thought.

This book will be invaluable to law students and lawyers engaged in comparative or transnational work, historians, social scientists, and all those interested in the legal traditions that underpin the world's major societies.

Genres: Law, Nonfiction, History

448 pages, Paperback

First published August 24, 2000

Reviews

[Yalan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this for my Comparative Legal Traditions module. Most of my friends hated it. I thought it's well-written and thought-provoking and I totally agree with Glenn's sentiments. I sold all my Year 2 books - including Company Law and Land Law in Singapore - but kept this one. Best law school textbook EVER.

[Katherine Boyle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was assigned for a class I took on comparative law. I was really excited to learn about this subject, as it was something brand new and interesting to me. This book, however, was poorly organized and hard to follow. I never really knew where the author was going with a particular point. This lack of organization made it really hard to compare the various systems presented in any meaningful way. The author also uses very paternalistic language in some of the chapters (particularly the non-Western systems). Further, the last couple of chapters (on Hindu Law and the "Asian Legal Tradition") seemed tacked on, as though they were more of an afterthought. Without coming out directly and saying it, the author seemed to imply throughout many of the chapters that civil law and common law (the two major Western systems) were the superior systems. Overall, the chapters meandered between thoughts, the organization of those chapters made little sense, and some of the content within was offensive.

[Kalle Wescott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read /Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law/, by Patrick Glenn:

http://www.paclii.org/journals/fJSPL/...

This book is very interesting. In the US we have common law traditions from the UK as well as civil law (including statutory law and regulations), but ultimately it's settled law (aka case law precedent) that determines much of civil and criminal law in the US.

In many other countries there are three or four legal systems, such as common law, civil law, customary law, and Sharia law (as one example).

Knowledge of these multiple, diverse legal systems is also very useful if you're going to do business in one or more of those countries.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dense, and takes a while to get into the writing style. Once you get the swing of the author's message the information starts to become easier to absorb - it's worth the effort. The footnotes are packed with good argumentation back ups and case law.

[Sofiakws · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for class. Pretty high-level abstract and convoluted, not my fav. I guess it succeeded in doing what it was trying to do, but…

[Connor Garris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book for school + I need to reach my reading goal

[Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being an amateur student of comparative law, I really enjoyed this book. It covers the development of 'major' legal traditions of the world. Although I found the writing style charming at times, at other times I really found it hard to follow what the author wanted to say (too many words, awkward phrases). In brief:

A Theory of Tradition: How to define a tradition
This section needs some serious work and should probably have spent more time looking at institutional theory than quoting Karl Popper.

Chthonic (a strange way of saying local, animist, and/or indigenous traditions)
This section was interesting, but I would like to see more structure in the approach to these various traditions. Maybe some anthropology? Or how about more Weber?

Talmudic
Civil Law
Islamic Law
Common Law
Hindu Law
Asian Law (Confucianism)
I found the above sections to be fascinating, even if they were brief and the author was forced to omit details due to the nature of the book as a textbook. Well done, amazing amount of synthesis!

Reconciling Legal Traditions
This section seemed rather limp to me. It starts with an interesting discussion of the borders (fuzzy) of traditions and the internal contradictions. It then attempts to talk about how mechanisms used to resolve internal divisions might be used to resolve external divisions between traditions. Search for the common themes and we will find sustainable ways to coexist in legal pluralism... hmmm, nice thoughts. While I am fascinated with legal pluralism and conflicts between traditions, I think we might be a little more realistic about identifying fundamental versus livable contradictions between systems and more realistic about the difficulty of negotiating the fundamental contradictions. It's not all alternative dispute resolution!

An afterthought from this book, while legal scholars have a unique and often better handle on the actual legal mechanisms between traditions, there are many much more interesting approaches to these problems that have been used by non-legal scholars like sociologists, anthropologists (Geertz), political scientists, and even evolutionary biologists.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Make no mistake, this book is a difficult read. I had to read each chapter twice in order to comprehend what they were saying. It is a worthwhile look at the cultural influences in comparative law, though it turns philosophical at times. It is not a study of the current laws of individual states.

[Fyreball · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough examination of the world's major legal tradtions, including Christian, Judaic, Islamic and Hindu. The text is not for light reading, though. We used this as a textbook in my conflict resolution program and I learned a lot from this book, particularly about Islamic legal traditions.