The foreign preponderates

One of negative comparative law’s leitmotivs addresses the way in which the comparatist-at-law inevitably partakes of the comparison that he stages, which entails that every piece of foreign-law research is, in sum, autobiographical – a fact that carries the most significant epistemic consequences, not least the impossibility of producing a report that would be objective or true. Further to returning to this overarching theme, this essay develops an additional dimension to the argument, which is that no matter how implicated in the comparison the comparatist finds himself to be, he remains in crucial respects enthralled by the foreign law-text. Indeed, there is what the text allows and what it prohibits, and the comparatist must operate within this array of textual epistemic enablements and strictures. In other words, the comparatist must deploy his comparison under the controlling authority of foreign textuality.