Introduction: The Philosophies of Comparative Law

This introductory essay outlines the Special Issue’s aims and contents. After having offered a general overview of the development and state of comparative law as a discipline, it introduces the reader to the issue’s articles. The issue features articles by leading scholars and emerging researchers that make significant contributions to the academic debate on the current status and future directions of comparative legal analysis and methodologies of research. More particularly, combining theoretically-oriented essays with empirical accounts of socio-cultural, pluralist dynamics of ordering from the Global South (i.e., Latin America) and Asia (i.e., Japan), it takes a further step towards molding a body of interdisciplinary, pluralist, critical, and contextual comparative legal scholarship by (a) critically exploring what “philosophies” have been informing and shaping its development over the past few decades, and (b) suggesting possible new directions of thought for an age, such as ours, characterized by increasing regulatory density and complexity, and geopolitical instability. It is by meaningfully embracing this critical, interdisciplinary, and pluralist spirit that this Special Issue moves away from reductionist understandings of the comparative enterprise and speaks of “philosophies” of comparative law.Non peer reviewe