ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the authority of interpretation in comparative legal studies usually comes directly from social sources in the different networks of community that legal regulation serves. It argues that determining the balance between these is one of comparative law's hardest but most important practical tasks and that this task must be understood in relation to the activity of legal interpretation more generally. The chapter argues that the authority point to a logic of sociolegal analysis, which makes the methods and outlook of comparative law specially, appropriates to confront the changing environment of contemporary law. It focuses on aspects of comparative law's concerns that might bring comparatists and legal sociologists closer together in their research objectives. By elaborating a legal concept of community, legal sociology can serve comparative law. The chapter suggests that the guiding concept in this enterprise should be that of community. It proposes that a new view of the global-local dynamic is possible.
