ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that comparative law as a discipline should consolidate itself as an independent subject with its own internal structure. The study of comparative law in the context of a course on jurispru-dence is, if the contemporary textbooks in English are any guide, a rare phenomenon. The absence of any comparative study of law in jurisprudence courses is, in other ways, unsurprising. The weaknesses with respect to comparative law are not as such the result of an absence of literature since there have been some significant and influential contributions to legal knowledge by comparativists. A comparative history of legal models can be a prelude to a history of the sub-structures of Western social thought in general. In other words comparative law is part of legal science, using "science" to reflect a discourse that functions at one and the same time within "facts" and within the conceptual elements that make up the "science".
