Acta Juridica Hungarica
Volume/Issue:
Volume 51: Issue 4
Taxonomy of law and legal mapping
Patterns and limits of the classification of legal systems
Author:
Csaba Varga

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Pages:
253–272
Online Publication Date:
11 Dec 2010
Publication Date:
01 Dec 2010
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/ajur.51.2010.4.2
Keywords:
family resemblences; legal families; civil/common law; Western/Soviet law; characterisation/definition; comparative law theory; comparative judicial mind
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Attempts from the 17th century onward anticipate the 20th-century mood of legal mapping. They classify legal arrangements by languages, races and genetic roots, then by their ideologies and technicalities. Later on they do so by separating the Western from the Soviet/socialist law, by their correspondence to underlying general cultures, as well as according to legal families. It is the insufficiency of resorting to dichotomy contrasting the Western “Us” to any differing Eastern “Others” that has recently resulted in typologising in terms of the dynamism and directions of legal development in the duality of professionalism and traditionalism or in the cross-reference of what is established/stable and unestablished/instable, and of what is drawn from Western and non-Western sources. Material taxonomy cannot be accomplished in law through genuine class-concepts. Characterisation through concepts of order can be achieved at most. In want of any meta-system, cultures formed to idealise and hypostasise ideas of order by independent principles can provide no common basis of division for law. Accordingly, only some division to major and minor sets and subsets can be achieved. The own arrangement will be better cognised by other schemes’ understanding. The gradual transcendence of rule-fetishism by identifying law with some specific culture may prevent the coming “clash of civilizations” from reaching aggressive self-assertion and care for the sustainability of the laws’ diversity.

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Cover Acta Juridica Hungarica
Acta Juridica Hungarica
Print ISSN:
1216-2574
Online ISSN:
1588-2616

Senior editors

Editor(s)-in-Chief: Éva Jakab

Co-Editor(s):
Viktor Lőrincz,
Fruzsina Orosz

Editor(s):
Samanatha Cheesman,
Zsuzsa Fejes,
Attila Kun,
Gábor Sulyok,
Márton Varju

Editorial Board

    1. Attila Badó
    1. Myátyás Bódig (Aberdeen)
    1. Zoltán Csehi
    1. Péter Cserne (Hull)
    1. Balázs Gellér
    1. András Jakab
    1. Miklós Király
    1. György Kiss
    1. Jan Kudrna (Praha)
    1. Herbert Küpper (Regensburg)
    1. Konrad Lachmayer (Durham)
    1. Andzrej Stanisław Mączyński (Kraków)
    1. Guido Pfeifer (Frankfurt am Main)
    1. Miklós Szabó
    1. Zoltán Szente
    1. G.J.J. Heerma van Voss (Leiden)
    1. Bernd Waas (Frankfurt am Main)
    1. Fryderyk Zoll (Osnabrück)

Advisory Board

    1. Péter Erdő
    1. Gábor Hamza
    1. Attila Harmathy
    1. László Kecskés
    1. Tibor Király
    1. László Korinek
    1. László Sólyom
    1. Lajos Vékás
    1. Imre Vörös

Acta Juridica Hungarica
P.O. Box 25
HU–1250 Budapest,Hungary
Phone: (36 1) 355 7384
Fax. (36 1) 375 7858
E-mail: acta.juridica@tk.mta.hu

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Acta Juridica Hungarica
Language English
Size  
Year of
Foundation		 1959
Publication
Programme		 changed title
Volumes
per Year		  
Issues
per Year		  
Founder Magyar Tudományos Akadémia  
Founder's
Address		 H-1051 Budapest, Hungary, Széchenyi István tér 9.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 1216-2574 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2616 (Online)

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