Institute for Intradisciplinary Comparative

Comparative law, by its very nature, is outward-looking. Its aim is to transcend normative, systematic and national boundaries, and to contextualise and relativise legal cultures and legal systems. In contrast, the focus of intradisciplinary comparative law is on the three pillars of the national legal system and thus on the internal workings of law and legal scholarship. It is based on the thesis that, despite their seemingly extensive theoretical and dogmatic autonomy (autopoiesis), the various branches of legal scholarship are, at least at a deeper level, dogmatically intertwined; that, under the conditions of legal practice and current legal scholarship, the internal boundaries between them are repeatedly blurred and, in some cases, even obliterated. In contrast to the founding thesis of modern sociology—according to which societies and their subsystems rationalise themselves through differentiation—intradisciplinary comparative law offers a perspective that seeks rationality through ‘communitarisation’. It aims to foster dialogue amongst the three disciplinary pillars, to make the insights gained within them mutually accessible, and thus to highlight the distinctive features and commonalities of the three sub-disciplines.