The course approaches comparative law and legal studies from a genuine global perspective.

It provides students with an overview of the world's most important legal traditions, questioning state-centered paradigms and investigating current legal transformations.

The first part of the course focuses on the meaning of comparative law and introduces fundamental concepts such as legal traditions, legal transplants, and legal pluralism. It considers legal globalization one of the most important developments in contemporary legal studies.

The second part deals with the core of Western legal traditions, analyzing the archetypical divide between common law and civil law. It also analyses mixed legal systems, their distinctive traits, and their growing importance for comparative legal studies. This part of the course also investigates the meaning of democracy and human rights as Western or universal values through concrete case studies and class debates.

The third cycle broadens the course’s comparative spectrum, approaching some of the most important non-Western/non-European legal traditions (Sub-Saharan, East-Asian, Hindu, Talmudic, Islamic, and Latin American) while investigating possible reconciliations of legal diversity on a global scale.

The course will provide students with the opportunities to:

1. Better appreciate how cultural, social, and historical factors dialogue and interrelate with the development of legal structures, doctrines, and substantive rules.
2. Approach the study of some of the major legal traditions of the world and their present relevance and vitality.
3. Acquire tools for understanding the impact of globalization on legal and political structures and the limits of State-centered legal paradigms.
4. Appreciate culturally pluralist perspectives on law while acquiring a comparative legal method and a global understanding of the contemporary legal transformations.
5. Enhance argumentative and legal analysis skills via class discussion and exchange.

Important: If you are a regular undergraduate or graduate student at Universidad de los Andes, you will not be able to register for courses with academic credits through Continuing Education. This registration must be done directly with the Faculty offering the course of interest.