Given that there is simply no globally agreed definition of ‘law’, and thus also of
‘good law’ in view of continuing human suffering that is often generated by law
(Baxi, 2002), any attempt to work on comparative law becomes potentially highly
idiosyncratic, even meaningless for many people and will of necessity be contested.
What is the point of such endeavours? Are these esoteric academic pursuits, ivory
or plastic tower activities, telling us more about the views and ambitions of the
respective author(s) than the subject, with limited relevance for practical applicability?
I am not starting with such critical comments here because I am against
comparative law in principle, far from it. But in view of undeniable ubiquitous local
specificities, we have to be cautiously realistic at all times to assess the fruits of
labour in comparative legal studies. Professor M. P. Singh, in his Preface to the
maiden edition of The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law 2016 (Singh, 2017:
xiii), rightly indicated that comparative law has had to struggle, in India and
elsewhere, to find wider acceptance as a useful academic pursuit, and as a tool to
sharpen the minds and improve the skills of legal professionals of the highest
calibre. Insightful reflections on the growth of comparative law as an exciting and
expanding sub-discipline are found in an inspiring introductory chapter (Nelken,
2007) to an important earlier handbook on comparative law (Örücü and Nelken,
2007). The increasingly high profile of scholarly writing and teaching on comparative
law today confirms that various battles of recognition of such fruitful
outcomes seem to have been won by now.