A Response to Professors Gianmaria Ajani and Vivian Curran 

May 23, 2025

[Editor’s note: this is the final of three posts, parts of a mini-symposium on Fernanda G. Nicola’s and Günter Frankenberg’s book Comparative Law, Introduction to a Critical Practice (Edward Elgar, 2024)]

We are indebted to the organizer of this online symposium, Professor Ioanna Tourkochoriti, whose leadership in revamping the ASCL blog has reinvigorated intellectual exchanges in comparative law. Her initiative is a timely reminder that engaging with comparative legal ideas requires not only scholarly rigor but also willingness to participate in more open, informal dialogue—particularly with two eminent scholars of the discipline, whose generous commentaries we are honored to receive.

We are grateful to Professor Gianmaria Ajani for his thoughtful reading of our book Comparative Law: Introduction to a Critical Practice. His reflections resonate deeply with the book’s core ambitions—especially our aim to move beyond the methodological constraints of traditional or mainstream comparative law teaching and to open new pedagogical spaces for critical, context-sensitive and politically engaged inquiries in a discipline that has long shaped, and been shaped by, the many trajectories and resistances of globalization.

Professor Ajani is absolutely right to foreground the pedagogical dilemmas that continue to confront those of us teaching comparative law: the balance between theory and practice, the tension between the “West and the Rest,” and the risk of overwhelming students with the sheer vastness of the field when asked to engage with “foreign law.” His recognition that our book attempts to tame these tensions—not by resolving them definitively, but by offering a usable toolkit that draws both from mainstream and critical approaches through what we call a critical practice—is especially appreciated.

We were particularly struck by his suggestion that our work serves as an “antidote from the vertigo of everything.” That sense of vertigo captures exactly the kind of paralysis that can arise when legal comparison is tasked with covering an endless list of topics and jurisdictions, often accompanied by the seemly innocent mantra—or false modesty?—that comparative law is “only a method.” We share our colleague’s conviction that what students need are intellectual tools that not only help them engage with diverse legal systems, but also enable them to move between doctrinal fields and normative commitments. Legal comparison, as we see it, is both a scholarly craft and a practical orientation toward the world—one that involves taking critical distance from familiar legal categories and using self-reflection as a means to understand the “foreign,” whether that be legal cultures, institutions, doctrines, or arguments. In doing so, students are invited to look back at their own legal traditions and appreciate the value of difference.

Professor Ajani’s attention to our treatment of legal transfers, property, contract, tort law, and constitutionalism goes to the heart of what we intended with this workbook. As he notes, our method does not rest on promoting best practices or pursuing harmonization. Rather, it invites students and practitioners to grapple with real-world problems—such as wrongful birth, the recognition of same-sex marriage, or the contested meaning of veiling in public spaces. These are not merely illustrative examples. They bring to the surface complex legal and policy arguments, distributive consequences, and the roles of diverse legal and social actors. They reveal how legal doctrines are embedded within political economies, social hierarchies, and cultural narratives—layers that a critical comparative practice must engage with to be meaningful.

Finally, we welcome his concluding observation that the book “opens classroom windows to let in some fresh air.” If our work helps dislodge the mannerisms that have too often dominated the teaching to comparative legal methods and theories—and instead encourages students to see laws as a dynamic, contested field in which they are in the driver’s seat, with tremendous agency—then we have accomplished what we set out to do.

We are equally grateful to Professor Vivian Curran for her generous and insightful commentary. Her reading brings into focus the dual ambition of the book: to offer an intellectually rigorous intervention for scholars and a practical toolkit for students, advocates and legal practitioners. We particularly value her recognition that we do not merely critique comparative law from a distance but seek to enact a different kind of comparative practice—one that engages in a dialogue with orthodox or mainstream approaches while remaining attentive to the socio-political, historical, material and linguistic contexts that shape legal meaning and law’s worldmaking.

We very much appreciate Professor Curran’s recognition that our book is “both nuanced enough to be of interest to scholars, and basic enough to be used as a teaching tool in the classroom,” as well as her emphasis on our treatment of language, legal globalization, and African land regimes. These themes reflect our commitment to expanding the scope of comparative law beyond its conventional terrain and, in particularly to including perspectives often relegated to what is referred to as law’s periphery. Her point about “Globalization IKEA-style” aptly captures the flattening tendencies we hoped to call into question by situating comparison in lived practices and uneven geographies. 

We are also grateful for her remarks on our treatment of contract law in the context of global supply chains and the erosion of contractual autonomy—a theme that, as she notes, bridges doctrinal analysis with the political economy and connects with our discussion of legal standardization in the analysis of legal transfer.

By the same token, we welcome Professor Curran’s focus on Comparing legal histories, the final chapter, where we examine how different nations accept legal sources and rules of evidence, using the concrete example of a case in which Canadian courts dealt with territorial claims of two hereditary Indigenous chiefs. The layered narrative we present there is intended to foreground a critical reading of the rule of law— one in which, after the exhaustion of the legal remedies, a song or a dance may ultimately be accepted as valid evidence.

We welcome Professor Curran’s critical observations as a vital and necessary part of the comparative conversation—one that must include the comparatist herself: her position, perspective and selectivity in choosing materials—in the symbolic comparative space. We appreciate her suggestion to engage more directly with behavioral law and economics in the discussion of contract law, her reminder of the nuanced precedent-based nature of common law regimes as well as her critique of the veiling chapter’s interpretive framing – offered to inspire a reading, both in the classroom and in the scholar’s study, that takes the workbook at its word. Her comments enrich the dialogue we hoped the book would spark: an exchange that does not end with our text but moves through it and beyond it.

If, as Professor Curran notes, our juxtaposition of the comparative mainstream canon with a critical, practice-oriented approach makes the book valuable to both students and scholars, then we are encouraged that our intervention contributes to a broader rethinking—of what comparative law is and what it can do. Ultimately, we see Comparative Law: Introduction to a Critical Practice not as a conclusion, but as an invitation: to reimagine what legal comparisons can accomplish in shaping a more equitable society—and to ask who gets to participate in that project, both within the law and beyond it.