ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the importance of land and customary law in South Africa and Vanuatu. It attempts to take seriously Esin Orucu’s challenge of a comparative law that looks beyond Western laws. The book analyses the approach of the Indian legal system to securing rights to post-divorce maintenance for women. It provides the value of ‘estrangement’, of a comparative legal scholarship that embraces alternative ways of thinking and disciplinary plurality. The book focuses on changes in law over time and the importation – or ‘transposition’ – of legal principles from one legal system into another. It explores the Dutch legal regime concerning alluvion, where land surface increases through deposits of sediment from rivers or the sea. The book deals with comparative legal history.