---

Comparative law and history of law are both traditionally devoted to deepening
the context of legal rules and legal institutions, i. e. to consider law in its space-
time coordinates.

---

Comparative law and the history of law are traditionally devoted to expanding the context of legal rules and legal institutions. Comparison involves history, as the well-known motto proclaims, but history also involves comparison. Both disciplines are in fact interested in deepening the space-time coordinates of law as a social phenomenon, which means that they take up a critical approach to their object of study.
In recent years, this trait is increasingly coming into conflict with the tendency to present law as a mere technocratic instrument for organizing societies. As a result of the "end of history" discourse, the Western economic and political order has become a definitive point of reference worldwide, with law scholars charged with identifying best practices to enhance their efficiency.
A group of comparative lawyers and legal historians critically discuss this assumption from a theoretical point of view as well as from the perspective of their respective fields of research. The result is a multifaceted range of ideas on the significance and possible future of two disciplines that share, in addition to their traditional approach, a crisis of identity.

---

Aragoneses, Alfons
Alfons Aragoneses is Associate Professor of Legal History at the University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and Associate Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History (Frankfurt M). He wrote his PhD on the history of comparative law. He has written articles and chapters of books in Castilian, English, French and German on history of Francoist Law. His research interests include Law and dictatorship, history of private law, transitional justice and the link between Law, memory and collective identity. He is the author of Un jurista del Modernismo. Raymond Saleilles y los orígenes del derecho comparado (2009) and Recht im "fin de siècle" (2007).

Brutti, Massimo
Massimo Brutti is Full Professor of Roman Law in the Department of Law at the University La Sapienza of Rome. His research interests range from Roman civil procedural law to the history of legal thinking, with focus on the Historical School and on the Pandectist School. Among his most recent

---

publications are: Vittorio Scialoja, Emilio Betti. Due visioni del diritto civile (2013), Dal contratto al negozio giuridico. Appunti (2013), Interpretare i contratti. La tradizione, le regole (2017).

Somma, Alessandro
Alessandro Somma, a Research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Legal history in Frankfurt am Main, Germany until 2002, is currently professor of Comparative law and Pro-rector for cultural activities and town-gown relations at the University of Ferrara, Italy. He is a member of the International Academy of Comparative law and of the board of the Italian Association of Comparative law. His main research fields include Theory and History of comparative law, Nazi and fascist theory of law, European private law, Globalization and theory of the state, Sovereign debt restructuring.

---