Critique of comparative law: to <i>compierre</i><i>Negative Comparative Law: A Strong Programme for Weak Thought</i> By PierreLegrand, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 352 pp., £95.00

Impeccable scholarship, inimitable style, and relentless critique are the hallmarks of nigh-on three decades of work that culminate in Pierre Legrand's unique and remarkable syntagm Negative Comparative Law. Part author biography, part treatise on method, part satire, and part harangue, the 15 essays comprising the volume cohere lucently and vividly around a critical desire to preserve the ethical sensibility of the foreign, and a crescendo of negative analyses of the addiction to similarity that marks the orthodoxy in comparative legal scholarship. For Legrand, the epithet implying scholarly exposition is onomastically incorrect and would be better replaced by ‘studies’ as an accurately weaker term for an academic imperialism that seeks endlessly to reduce the foreign to the domestic and to capture the other through imprisonment in the same. It is a narrative of epistemicide, of the shellac of positivism, of colonialist mind games, of exterminist thought play that inculcates error in students and circulates ideological placebos or rank inaccuracies among academic colleagues. Starting with the most intimate, insightful, and candid dimension of the work, Legrand's author biography plays an unsettling role in the theory of the foreign that lies at the heart of any rigorous and intellectually honest comparative legal studies. To write on foreign law is to invent it, to create an account through translation and interpretation of an other that will ever remain other, which is to say irreducible and inassimilable to the vernacular tradition and local law to which it is putatively compared and conjoined. Such, of course, is also true of the domestic law, which is necessarily equally translated in secondary academic reporting, analysis, exposition, and interpretation, but Legrand's project is big enough already to encourage a certain boundary in focus, for exemplificatory reasons, upon the foreign. It is here that the author biography plays a vital and creative heuristic role. One may not be able to explain the work through the life, but ‘one certainly cannot explain it apart from the life’ (p. 317). To create, invent, interpret, and write of and on another law is necessarily to embed oneself in a hermeneutics of choice, in personal experience, in the anecdata that define what is foreign and what is familiar. It is in its entirety an engagement of the self that must begin, as Freud warranted, with the author's journey, the patterns established in childhood, the domus and doom that define the unfamiliar and non-native, and so the sensibility of the foreign and of things said and done other-wise and other-where. It is here, for petit Legrand, a matter of lack and of drive, a desire for what is missing, the will to escape a childhood home without books or culture, and the shame of what he terms a ‘sub-intellectual environment’ (p. 336), the honte culturelle or social shame of being a heavily accented, Francophone, suburban Québécois. This haunting background – such wounds are always relative – generates a dual drive: to escape the tainted vernacular vestrydom of the provincial and to build an unimpugnable intellectual armoury, a pristine epistemic method that could withstand the attacks that will inevitably arrive. Flight, and here in classical style one might cite the warring theologians: fugiendum ad montes, ad montes scriptuararum, meaning that for the young Legrand escape is to texts, to intellectual endeavour, to libraries, to Oxford University.1 Departure is both literal – geographical and chorographical – and intellectual, in the search for rigour, for meaning, for the poetics of legitimacy that will veil and perhaps erase the past, the unwanted childhood. It is a journey across cultures, to the medieval, green-sward-swaddled collegiate university, and then later to France, to the Netherlands, and to a diversity of other jurisdictions across the globe, only finally to be based in Paris and currently, at the time of publication, visiting in the United States (US). The sense of the foreign, of being an other, persists indefinitely in the unique and crystalline character of his prose, in the idiosyncratic adhesion to difference that combines in the remarkable novelty of style, the percussive insistence on detail, and the lacerating critical vision, or, as he puts it himself, ‘a taste for difficulty and effort, in-depth and wide-ranging probing, for meticulous argumentation and writing (one of my abiding preoccupations being to hide the inferiority of the place whence I hail)’ (p. 367). An eccentric, erudite, both harsh and generous supervisor, Bernard Rudden, who appears to have lived in the Oxford law library, provides a model of scholarly excellence, though not without its weaknesses, not without improvement being possible, and generates an enduring intellectual and amicable relationship that continued through France, Canada, the US, and of course England, where this inaugural scholastic figure now lies buried, haunting not only the law library but also the author biography and the book under dissection. The good father models earnestness, effort, and an intellective erudition so extensive that Legrand can, in one long and superb citation from an unpublished paper of Rudden's, trace the rule in Hadley v. Baxendale2 from the Victorian Judge Baron Alderson, to a US treatise by Sedgwick on the measure of damages, and thence to the Code Napoleon, to the seventeenth-century jurists Pothier and Domat, to the early modern Gallic jurist Dumoulin, to the post-glossator Cynus, who in turn was using the Glossa Ordinaria of Accursius, which is based upon the Florentine manuscript of the Corpus Juris Civilis, itself reflecting debates in Constantinople on both remedies and the views of the Roman lawyers of the Republic. Rudden concludes this marvel of philological tracing with the constricted view that ‘the modern rule in Hadley v. Baxendale is a distant, but direct, product of their opinions. And of nothing more’ (p. 333). The continuing, indeed persistent flight from the limits of a culture, the constant sense of being alone, of not being at home, of being a stranger in foreign parts, in alien lands and other laws, generates an extraordinary eye for detail, for the particularities of persons, places, and presentations of selves and laws. The author biography is thus in part an exorcism, a taking leave, which leads Legrand to self-consciously stare across the vacancy that separates him from ‘those days’ (p. 339). More than that, ceaseless travel, perpetuum mobile, is the project necessary to ‘eliminate abjection from my life’ (p. 341) and a quest to find, borrowing from Beckett, the assassinated being within, and to give it life. It produces, in a fashion not entirely removed from Rudden's originality of gloss (we are dealing, after all, with a comparative lawyer), a strident creativity and a radical novelty of style, subject, and literary form of project. In one chapter, to take an inventive instance, Pierre the protagonist invents a species of parallel intellectual journey, from Canada to Oxford, in the feminine persona of the fictive Imogene, the authorial animus shifting to the projection of anima.3 The aptly named Imogene, code for Cymbeline, the virtuous wife of the exiled Posthumus, suggests nicely the importance of ethics to epistemology, a constant theme of integrity and of admission of singularity as well as of a mortality that in writing leaves a trace.4 She is studying the appositely strange topic of the royal prerogative and so, armed with all of the baggage of gender, education, culture, and personal sensibility, she travels to Oxford, treads the paths and sits in the libraries that the peerless Legrand has travelled before. It is a wonderful exercise in the imaginative genealogy of a text not yet written. Quotidian life, paths traversed, cultures crossed, memories entangled, ghosts inhabiting places, spaces, and scripts, and in sum the journey is ethnographically depicted as prelude and preface to the possibility of any understanding of the strangeness of the distinctly English royal prerogative. By the end of her journey, Imogene has in introspective mode considered the Spanish prerogativas reales, problems of language and translation, the epistemological dangers of academic dressage, and the ‘otherwhere’ of the Bodleian Library, and concludes that she is necessarily the foreign law that she to and that the foreign is not that the foreign is not that a cannot the that a of the foreign that cannot itself to what have long the that the across cannot be or It is from the of method, the of the that Legrand's that one cannot not that one must not to the and then in a of his to the the of cannot and must not (p. The – and it is and – is to build a for an and form of by comparative legal on a rigorous and the an a a or and so And it that one was as a or it and in what – what difference it (p. of to law, and or in or the US, then have to to upon the of is it to another culture, a other and at that a vernacular or The to scholarship, is that the of understanding the of law is and the that comparative is the is to the of one on of one the difference of the foreign in its the law has to be in in self and other, and such as and both home and It is work at the of the an and a and in the that terms the to one to The of the of the of to is that of to an culture, and the of haunting and that of the language and being and an equally from of of all law being all law in sense that leads a to for as in and cultures, or law to the in and the United and among the and This as by Legrand in the inventive form of a that comparative law has to a of – a – where is of a of (p. To upon the to true to another culture, it in its for and taking the ever of the academic of of being as or of being and of in the of who on unsettling the of by the of similarity and upon the foreign as the of the alien and The is (p. an view that to the of not (p. This of critical – it – is in terms of epistemic integrity and the rigorous of both the personal and the social that generates the of the law being is the all law is and to it in another – another another mode of law – and to the and that has the It is not similarity but difference that the and this a of the of by of to the and that have the or It is a of a method of the and that of of of who not to but desire to the and of Roman law an and is the to to the unfamiliar in all of its and the of their meaning by the self through the that one is not alone, but that the past, the of that the language all and as the in what The and that an are as part of legal and and as the of of and a genealogy of the of any law, an of its that Legrand terms (p. and are at in to a of and that or the sense of the of a The of in the and in the of culture, the of for to the in the in the style of the a to a for a a of the and not of the the in style any in that is to at the that this a and a in a place at a (p. The or of could be than in such an of it and laws, for on students only be compared by the the and the and of and the and For Legrand, the of laws, of and law, inevitably of and gender, and one that though have for in the remain able to or to the to be of and as of their and so by their It is a matter of and in as of in and and a legal a to the is not only but also comparative on gender, and is by Legrand, and could indeed be done in to the law in his of he able to the of It would have to the from law to the on in to their but such an the of as the of method necessary to and to a social and that itself any An of the the later Legrand suggests in his work a the of work that will the of the the and of the ‘the (p. of Legrand most of his in in his and to this he with him the necessary a and a a an a and my on foreign law to all of or true a for through epistemic a and an as It is in other to the role of play in the desire for the foreign and the of the The ghosts be to in the irreducible singularity of authorial and a sense of will the style of the epistemic the of the assassinated the of the the and days’ (p. and the sense of but one that This necessarily both and the of the play of the and of and from the of the of a of the vernacular and foreign, self and other, and of course the Legrand and the and of or which only be a is to or any limits on the epistemological of the understanding – an that the of an or (p. are is not in and the of his his of the is – an in Legrand's which in a where is to a book with such (p. and In an on the and or and of the work, are that Legrand by Oxford to the book or to the where the other at that project was and to be and (p. by the book as a text than under the would his are not he but the book was and this a good as it through and the end of the a is not the (p. is a in the that it is not the role of to epistemic but at the time it is also a The role of and a a of the an admission that the The stranger is that the of – and the of the in – for a academic is to a scholarly to on the of epistemic for and here, on Legrand's its role and he to to the of the of It is an the always as Freud puts it, the of the to The and of critical here with the of Negative Comparative which is at students (p. and at for legal from the of the classical ad to the of the of and by a an (p. is a and to the scholarly project. The in and is being the foreign is being from the and of comparative law who are being and a and Legrand of his critical role and to a and The is that the of Negative Comparative is not to but to This is not but the with the poetics of all and the work is at the the and both the and the to the the irreducible and the of the foreign. is the journey, the author biography, that is in such in To better is to – of the of the foreign, of the of course, in his of foreign legal provides an of that, an to the of comparative the other in the from the to the to and work of enduring translated English by a figure than as to Comparative is the of the treatise and to is that the is and by yet also an and their of (p. work is and yet the orthodoxy in comparative legal the of an and are the the of the must their must build and but it has to be that it is upon this that Legrand must his he law is I for a not the who plays the for on (p. The the the and the are to be that in the of that law is Legrand in so the Bernard Rudden, in or law, would have to such a The of the of the supervisor, the of and the work also be as of place in this to a The Legrand him that he on taking a thought to be an and to this Legrand a that this was not the that he must to the time Rudden, that and my on the (p. Legrand's at in by on the of as academic as an other that Legrand has to It is in a that is a tradition of comparative legal that Legrand to a that a that as well as a of the foreign that to be as a to the and of the in the It has then and finally to be that it is on the of early work, the and their and their that the are the the the and which he and on which he and such could be with a of that his to It would be to and the admission that I have it is by on the of in a for what is and is the negative the critical the to the of that and the wounds and the where a a in a critical a to are now in the and Legrand's and are must also that he is part of the a most and a of the yet his The is that the of the work – Rudden's, for instance, with its but also its – an of a desire for an for the foreign, a will to and that also the academic that text as the in One the by to the of Rudden's of the rule in Hadley v. Baxendale The after the of early medieval, and then classical are ‘the modern rule in Hadley v. Baxendale is a distant, but direct, product of their opinions. And of nothing The the erudition is without both and a the of any other a with which to more’ is and course is and to Legrand's theory of law as culture, the erudition is the of a to of the and that this as any Baron may have a rule that the that Rudden so but he was also the rule for the and of course of his culture, and the of the the of the it would have to that the of the and of a of was to the to the from the of the of the that their this to Rudden's to Legrand's critique of the of in v. The was with a and the the Legrand that in to the legal of it also an of an and a taking account the social of the the is that the of in the a (p. It to place for the of a upon by the and in the The exposition and are Legrand the as an of a and and here and in the of It that Legrand a view of Rudden's analysis, yet tracing of and and to the in Hadley v. of and of – and social – are in the and in both The of Baron is not or only a a of a philological it is also an of and it is a that the is not for it not at the time of the to with a of as to and a literal of the of as in terms to any of that for this putatively and would have The rule and so and the of the than done or through as in the of the is always and in this it is the of style and that dimension of the essays that is that an that (p. to a in the sense of as a of and will the book that, and who the who in the of the the the – all and a of that Legrand's and upon which he his of and his epistemic and but his he is in and with the that so his and his the the sits in the libraries, and and with and other though comparative law in or with his The is the unique of the the of the – so and so – to the of the of and the of Legrand not he write in the style of who what may is a of the the of academic a of epistemic at the of comparative legal is thus by the desire for and the book only provides of the yet to it the in which such of foreign as and other is of the is to say than that this critique of comparative law, and a work as and in its of as Negative Comparative must the that it and the that it The is to the to the of radical of the this work with and an is to both students and with a critical for the foreign in other laws. The of translation – which must always remain what the an of a language – and the the foreign are to be of the which is the of any to the of the foreign and the of the To is to to take for to the the the the and that measure the that is possible, all that is is to and of the other so as to of meaning, of that interpretation and The armed with the and epistemic that Legrand as to true to difference will play a role in the and of in what is law in the and through which the of is the of style, the and of of thought in creative The of to Oxford, the candid and author biography, an with the author or with himself, the narrative of and the and epistemic of culminate in a remarkable a and Legrand was the not not the and Legrand and an an to the And the is the of the unique and the vernacular and familiar. of that of that the must inevitably for Imogene, for for any with their of and of cannot but so in to – or, in my to In a of and of both and style that is in academic Legrand's a of what before. To is to to and to the critique of comparative law to – after the of negative the of epistemic the of method, and the and of a style have – is to the and of both the other culture, and in the vernacular so as to and to The project has a certain a of that will – by of of or of time – Legrand is what the Roman lawyers an of a critical at the end of the that he It might not have to have of the critical work that place under the of as well as under other – such as legal of law, and critical theory – to have from to have of the or of that would is another is an erudite, and all work of scholarship. The method of at and in the book is the of tracing the that both and a legal sensibility, the and of and that form the of the of The of comparative thought is the necessary of being able to the both the law, it be and the of Negative Comparative will have a and upon its the for comparative is a of students who and who a or sense of of and who play across the of the will be by their lack of the that Legrand the of other the and play of and philological the of and the that the of comparative tracing is to may of the of in of and For the of the of the the of and the style, the and the to to and will be will that to to be a comparative to a and here it is in the fashion of a One has to all is an is a and it is a life, a to the and for this my to the for their to what are on and at a of to for his and but on a and to for of an

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