Working Papers logo 130

I will talk today about the use of foreign law in American judicial opinions. Since most of what I will have to say is unfavorable to the use of foreign law, I feel I should begin by pointing out that I am not a xenophobe. I do not mind foreign law. In fact, in my years as a law professor, I used to teach foreign law. One of my subjects was comparative law. I indeed believe that comparative law might well be made a mandatory subject in United States law schools. Just as you do not understand your own language until you have taken a foreign language (whether it be Latin, German or any other one), you do not understand your own legal system until you see how the ordering of the same matters could be done in a different way. The only way to appreciate the distinctiveness of your system--what drives it--is to examine some other system.

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