Traditionally, comparative private law has focused on multi-jurisdictional studies of legal doctrine in specific areas of law, such as contract or property, without much reference to the various contexts in which doctrine exists and operates: historical, institutional, social, cultural, technological, political and so on.

This series departs from both the multi-jurisdictional and the doctrinal elements of this paradigm. Each volume in the series will focus on a single jurisdiction (such as China), a group of related legal systems (such as Latin-American or low/middle income) or a ‘legal tradition’ (such as Islamic law). The primary aim in so doing is not, explicitly, to compare the law of the subject jurisdiction(s) or tradition with the law of some other jurisdiction(s) or tradition(s). Rather, books in this series are particularly intended for readers from other jurisdictions or traditions who seek an understanding of the law in the subject jurisdiction(s) or tradition, whether for its own sake or as data for comparison with their own or other jurisdictions and traditions. This means that while authors in the series do not need to be experts in the law of more than one jurisdiction or tradition, they will be sensitive to the ways in which the law of their subject jurisdiction(s) or tradition is, or is not, distinctive from the law of some other jurisdiction(s) or tradition(s). Put differently, books in the series are written by insiders but primarily for an audience of outsiders.

As for the doctrinal, a contextual focus of much traditional comparative law, the phenomenon, well known amongst comparative lawyers, of ‘false friend’ – individual words that look similar in different languages but, in fact, have quite different conceptual roots, – can also exist at the level of legal rules and principles found in various legal systems. Rules and principles may be superficially similar in formulation and structure but, at the same time, rooted in quite different conceptual and social soil. Indeed, in my experience of comparing public law in various English-language legal systems, the very same phenomenon can be found within one and the same language, affecting understanding of words as ubiquitous as ‘law’ itself and principles as basic as, for instance, that public officials must not act contrary to law.