Law's Horizons

The recent de-globalizing trends have brought various tensions between the legal self and the legal other. Bloc mentality fueled by de-globalization narratives discourages the exploration of shared legal grounds, risking a legal community unable or unwilling to compare. The new legal parochialism calls for a conscious effort of serious self-reflection among legal scholars. In particular, given the current U.S. constitutional controversies on sensitive issues, such as abortion, this Article lends credence to the pragmatic contribution of comparative law in testing serious candidates for proper legal solutions. Facing this challenge, this Article seeks a deeper, philosophical foundation in the study of comparative law through "philosophical hermeneutics." Genuine understanding of a foreign legal system begins with an awareness of one's own finitude, which is so deeply entrenched and remains unnoticed until it collides with the other's horizon. The practical consequence of the "fusion" of horizons in a hermeneutic circle is an opportunity to transform a comparativist's original horizon. Out of this "critical self-consciousness" emerges the ethics of comparative law, i.e., the readiness to accept the fact that our own law might not be the only prudential solution to the same challenges shared by other legal jurisdictions. This empathetic ethics, this Article concludes, can provide a therapeutic response to regressive legal essentialism evoked by de-globalization.