Abstract

The presentation will introduce Negative Comparative Law: A Strong Programme for Weak Thought, 465 pp. (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming May 2022). The book takes the form of a critical manifesto for a radically alternative approach to the theory and practice of comparative law. Harnessing insights from a range of disciplinary discourses, the argument advocates for comparative law’s rejection of its dominant epistemology and for the investigation of the study of foreignness anew.

About the Speaker

A graduate of McGill University, of the Sorbonne, and of the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, Professor Dr Dr Pierre Legrand teaches comparative law at the Sorbonne. Professor Legrand has held visiting professorships – on occasion, for over fifteen or twenty consecutive years – at the University of Cambridge, the University of San Diego, the University of Melbourne, the University of Timişoara, the University of Toronto, the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, the University of Copenhagen, the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Uppsala, the National University of Singapore, HBKU College of Law and Public Policy in Doha (Qatar), and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná in Brazil. For the past ten years, he has been teaching annually at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, at the Institut d’études politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, and at the Institut de droit des affaires internationales in Cairo. Professor Legrand publishes in English and French. His work has attracted substantial scholarly attention in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia. It has been translated from the French or the English into seven languages including Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian. In particular, two books of Professor Legrand’s have been published in Portuguese (Brazil) by Editora Contracorrente in 2018 and 2021. In 2017, the American Journal of Comparative Law, the flagship law review in the field of comparative law worldwide, devoted a special issue to Professor Legrand’s work entitled “What We Write About When We Write About Comparative Law: Pierre Legrand’s Critique in Discussion”. This supplement features an original contribution on Professor Legrand’s part (“Jameses at Play: A Tractation on the Comparison of Laws”, 132 pp.) and the texts of five invited discussants. Since the foundation of the Journal in 1952, it is the first time that the Editorial Board has taken the initiative to honour a comparatist in this way. Representative publications of Professor Legrand’s include “The Same and the Different”, in Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and Transitions, ed. by Pierre Legrand and Roderick Munday (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 240-311; “Issues in the Translatability of Law”, in Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, ed. by Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood (Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 30-50; “On the Singularity of Law”, (2006) 47 Harvard International Law Journal 517-30; “Foreign Law: Understanding Understanding”, (2011) 6/2 Journal of Comparative Law 67-177; “The Guile and the Guise: Apropos of Comparative Law As We Know It”, (2021) 16 Asian Journal of Comparative Law 155; “Mind the Gap! Translation of Foreign Law Is Not What You Think”, (2021) 8 Revista de Investigações Constitucionais 601; Pour la relevance des droits étrangers (IRJ Sorbonne Editions, 2014), 454 pp.; and Le Droit comparé, 5th and final ed. (Presses Universitaires de France, 2015), 128 pp. In recent years, Professor Legrand has written extensively on the relevance of philosopher Jacques Derrida’s work for comparative law. For instance, he has published “Siting Foreign Law: How Derrida Can Help”, (2011) 21 Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 595-629. He has also contributed “Jacques Derrida Never Wrote About Law” to Administering Interpretation, ed. by Peter Goodrich and Michel Rosenfeld (Fordham University Press, 2019) and has written in Derrida and Legal Philosophy, ed. by Peter Goodrich et al. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). In addition, he has authored the chapter on Derrida and law for the Blackwell Companion to Derrida, ed. by Zeynep Direk and Leonard Lawlor (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). Professor Legrand is due to publish three monographs on the workings of negative comparative law with Routledge in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Practicalities

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