The last two decades have witnessed an exponential growth in debates on the use of foreign law by courts. Different labels have been attached to the same phenomenon: judges drawing inspiration from outside of their national legal systems for solving purely domestic disputes. By doing so, the judges are said to engage in cross-border judicial dialogues. They are creating a larger, transnational community of judges. This book puts similar claims to test in relation to highest national jurisdictions (supreme and constitutional courts) in Europe today. How often and why do judges choose to draw inspiration from foreign materials in solving domestic cases? The book addresses these questions from both an empirical and a theoretical angle. Empirically, the genuine use of comparative arguments by national highest courts in five European jurisdictions is examined: England and Wales, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. On the basis of comparative discussion of the practice and its national theoretical underpinning in these and partially also in other European systems, an overreaching theoretical framework for the current judicial use of comparative arguments is developed. Drawing on the author's own past judicial experience in a national supreme court, this book is a critical account of judicial engagement with foreign authority in Europe today. The sober middle ground inductively conceptualized and presented in this book provides solid jurisprudential foundations for the ongoing use of comparative arguments by courts as well as its further scholarly discussion.

This book examines an unexplored method of interpretation: the use of domestic law in the interpretation of international law.

When and why do judges use inspiration from other systems in solving cases in national law? This book examines the frequency and the genuine practice of cross-border judicial dialogue in contemporary Europe. It evaluates these findings and asks what they mean for our understanding of judicial reasoning and judicial function today.

While the role of comparative law in the courts was previously only an exception, foreign sources are now increasingly becoming a source of law in regular use in supreme and constitutional courts. There is considerable variation between the practices of courts and the role of comparative law, and methods remain controversial. In the US, the issue has been one of intense public debate and it is still one of the major dividing issues in the discussion about the role of the courts. Contributing to the existing discussion of the use of comparative law in the courts, this book provides an inclusive, coherent, and practical analysis of the relevant law and jurisprudence in comparative law in the courts. It examines the consequences for court procedures and the form of judgments, as well as how foreign sources are drawn upon in private international law, European law, administrative law, and constitutional law as well as before general courts. The book also includes case studies of comparative law used in particular spheres of the law, such as tort law and consumer law. Written by practising judges and lawyers as well as leading academics, this book serves as a central reference point concerning the role of comparative law before the courts.

Judicial Cosmopolitanism: The Use of Foreign Law in Contemporary Constitutional Systems offers a detailed account of the use of foreign law by supreme and constitutional Courts of Europe, America and East Asia. The individual contributions highlight the ways in which the use of foreign law is carried out by the individual courts and the path that led the various Courts to recognize the relevance, for the purpose of the decision, to foreign law. The authors try to highlight reasons and types of the more and more frequent circulation of foreign precedents in the case law of most high courts. At the same time, they show the importance of this practice in the so-called neo constitutionalism.

Whereas many modern works on comparative law focus on various aspects of legal doctrine, the aim of this book is more theoretical - to reflect on comparative law as a scholarly discipline, and in particular its epistemology and methodology. It seeks answers to fundamental, scientific problems of comparative research.