Washington and Lee law professor Russ Miller is leading a three-day seminar for graduate and post-graduate researchers at Humboldt University’s Law Faculty in Berlin. The seminar, entitled “Beyond Comparison: Germany’s Plural Legal Culture” is meant to challenge traditional comparative law approaches to classifying and, thereby engaging with, German law and legal culture.
According to the program website, “comparative lawyers, when classifying the world’s legal systems into several ‘legal families,’ insist on assigning Germany to the genus ‘civil or continental law’. Indeed, Germans have embraced the characterization, not just conceding but very often celebrating this traditional characterization of their legal culture. This practice ignores many of the lessons jurisprudence has learned from critical theory, particularly the compelling claims made by legal pluralism.”
The curriculum and materials for the seminar are largely drawn from Miller’s contributions to the forthcoming co-authored comparative law casebook co-authored titled “Global Legal Tradtiions: Comparative Law for the 21st Century” (Lexis/Nexis). A number of the seminar participants will be fellows in the post-graduate fellowship program “Rechtskulturen” (“Legal Cultures”) jointly sponsored by the Hulmboldt Law Faculty and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
More information about the program is available online.
