Comparative Law in Trade

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of comparative law theory, tracing its methodological transitions and exploring its disciplinary turns, with particular attention on the emerging field of comparative trade law. Comparative law has moved from mainstream, largely functionalist methods—focused on collecting data with predetermined goals and asserting universal applicability—toward critical approaches that interrogate assumptions of neutrality and global convergence. The chapter illustrates how these methodological transitions resonate within different discourses in comparative trade law. It examines how comparative legal knowledge, long influential in other doctrinal fields, has enriched trade law-a domain traditionally grounded in international economic law. The chapter shows how comparative methods can offer new analytical tools for analyzing contemporary trade policy. Using a comparative lens, the chapter applies the notions of legal transplants and legal transfers to regulatory cooperation, global convergence, and local differentiation in trade agreements, highlighting the dual tendencies toward harmonization and fragmentation. It also underscores the relevance of legal history in exposing the contingent and ideological dimensions underlying the nonlinear evolution of trade tariffs.