Courts and Comparative Law

While the role of comparative law in the courts was previously only an exception, foreign sources are now increasingly becoming a source of law in regular use in supreme and constitutional courts. There is considerable variation between the practices of courts and the role of comparative law, and methods remain controversial. In the US, the issue has been one of intense public debate and it is still one of the major dividing issues in the discussion about the role of the courts.

Contributing to the existing discussion of the use of comparative law in the courts, this book provides an inclusive, coherent, and practical analysis of the relevant law and jurisprudence in comparative law in the courts. It examines the consequences for court procedures and the form of judgments, as well as how foreign sources are drawn upon in private international law, European law, administrative law, and constitutional law as well as before general courts. The book also includes case studies of comparative law used in particular spheres of the law, such as tort law and consumer law. Written by practising judges and lawyers as well as leading academics, this book serves as a central reference point concerning the role of comparative law before the courts.

Mads Andenas, Professor at the University of Oslo, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, and Visiting Fellow at the Institute of European and Comparative Law, Oxford,Duncan Fairgrieve,Senior Fellow in Comparative Law at the British Institute of International andComparative Law, London, and Professeur Associe at Universite Paris Dauphine

Mads Andenas is Professor at the University of Oslo, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Visiting Fellow at the Institute of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford. He is the UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary Detention and the chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. He was the Director of the Centre of European Law, King's College, University of London, between 1992 and 1999 and the Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law between 1999 and 2005.


Duncan Fairgrieve is Senior Fellow in Comparative Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, London, and Professeur Associe at Universite de Paris Dauphine. He holds degrees from Oxford, London, and Paris. He has published widely in the field of comparative law in English and French. He practices as an avocat at the Paris Bar and as a Barrister at One Crown Office Row, London.