Comparative Legal History

In a globalized world, the ability to communicate with foreign colleagues and understand what distinguishes our legal tradition from theirs is an indispensable skill for a lawyer who has the ambition to achieve professional excellence.

With this in mind, this course aims to compare different legal systems to achieve a deeper understanding of the forces that through history have influenced their development. Apart from helping students attain a higher level of legal understanding, education and culture, the aim of the course is to give the students intellectual tools that will help them when they come into contact with rules, actors and thought models that do not belong to the Swedish tradition.

The course begins with a critical discussion of the division of the world's legal system into so-called legal families. Thereafter, the relationship between a country's general culture and its legal tradition is studied. Among others, ideas and theses from Charles de Montesquieu, Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Alan Watson and Pierre Legrand will be discussed.

The main body of the course consists of a legal-historical and comparative analysis of the western world's three main so-called "legal families": civil law (with special focus on France and Germany), common law (focusing on England and the United States) and the Scandinavian legal family.

Within the different legal families, particular emphasis will be placed on the sources of law, on the various actors operating in the legal systems (e.g. lawyers and judges), on the legal method and on legal institutions that characterize a particular legal system (e.g. judicial review in the US).

Examination of the course will take place through seminars and a written exam at the end of the course.