The American Journal of Comparative Law

Introduction

“The American Journal of Comparative Law is published by the American Society of Comparative Law.

American Society of Comparative Law

The first officers of the Society, elected in 1951, reflected the significance of the nascent organization to the emerging fields of comparative and foreign law and private international law (conflict of laws)The American Journal of Comparative Law is not operating exclusively, and even not primarily, within the United States but rather on a truly global scale

From the Publisher

“The American Journal of Comparative Law is not operating exclusively, and even not primarily, within the United States but rather on a truly global scale. This is true both regarding our authors and our readers. We have received submissions from authors in over forty countries, representing all continents, regions, and legal cultures of the world. We have subscribers in over eighty countries around the globe. We are quite confident that few, if any, other law reviews published in the United States can match this. Thus, the context, in which our Journal should be ranked (if at all), is the global environment of comparative law publications. In that environment, we are generally recognized as one of the top three (and perhaps the premier) journal of its kind. Our two main competitors are published in England and Germany, respectively.

In contrast to the vast majority of law reviews published in the United States, we are peer-reviewed, i.e., the selection of the articles we publish is based on the evaluations provided by generally respected academics who are specialists in their field, not by second or third year law students (as is the case with all student run journals which comprise over ninety percent of the American law review scene). In particular, every article we publish has been recommended by typically two outside reviewers and then accepted by the editor-in-chief.

We are highly discriminating in our selection and publish around 6-8 % of the articles submitted to us. Note that we already receive by and large only articles specializing in comparative and foreign law. Of those, we have to reject over ninety percent – simply because competition is so stiff.

History

The history of the Journal is closely linked to the history of the organization which publishes it, i.e., The American Society of Comparative Law. The Society was founded in 1951. The first officers of the Society reflected the significance of the nascent organization to the emerging fields of comparative and foreign law and private international law (conflict of laws). The officers and their affiliation were: President, Phanor J. Eder (American Foreign Law Association); Vice President, Hessel E. Yntema (University of Michigan); Secretary, Alexis C. Coudert (Parker School, Columbia University); and Treasurer, David F. Cavers (Harvard University). Within one year they had established The American Journal of Comparative Law, with Hessel Yntema as its Editor-in-Chief. The remainder of that first board of editors also gave great promise that the goal of establishing a comparative law journal would be a success: Joseph Dainow, Walter Derenberg, Albert Ehrenzweig, Jerome Hall, John Hazard, Heinrich Kronstein, Myres McDougal, Kurt Nadelmann, Max Rheinstein, Rudolf Schlesinger, David Stern, and Arthur von Mehren.

Roscoe Pound, then dean emeritus of Harvard Law School, wrote in the Journal’s first issue about the important role that comparative law had played in the development of American law. Beyond the contributions of Kent and Story in incorporating ideas of civilian lawyers, Pound exhorted: “If we . . . compare the authoritative techniques received in different bodies of law and the modes of applying them, this along with the established comparison of authoritative precepts and doctrines as it has gone in the past, will yield a complete, well-rounded comparative method well worthy of a place among the received methods of the science of law. Such a method is needed in the economically unifying world of today and will be needed even more as we achieve the more complete unification that will overcome the nationalism we have inherited from the sixteenth century.”

Hessel Yntema at the same time summarized his vision for the Journal. “The purposes in view, corresponding to the practical and scientific objectives of comparative law, are twofold: on the one hand, to encourage general investigation of legal problems, whether theoretical or empirical, as essential to the advancement of legal science and, on the other, to provide information respecting foreign legal developments, as increasingly requisite in legal practice and for legal reform. That these, the scientific and the practical, are complementary aspects of law, both of which require attention, has been recognized in the organization of the Journal, which is designed to provide a forum in which academic scholarship and the practising bar can provide mutual assistance in the examination of basic or current legal problems on a comparative basis.”
Other Activities of the American Society of Comparative Law

In addition to the Journal, the ASCL from the beginning coordinated American participation in the prestigious congresses of the International Academy of Comparative Law. In 1952, the national committee (managed by Roscoe Pound and John Hazard) planned for the United States national reports to the Fourth International Congress of Comparative Law held in Paris in 1954. The ASCL has played that role for all subsequent congresses, up to and including the Seventeenth International Congress in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in 2006.

Today the Society is a thriving organization of about 100 institutional sponsor members and a growing number of individual members. In the aggregate, these members represent most of the sustained support for scholarly activities in comparative and private international law in the United States. Members range from the Chinese Law Society of America to practically every leading American law school. In recent years, non-United States institutions, such as Bucerius Law School (Hamburg) and McGill University Institute of Comparative Law (Montreal), have joined the Society, making it more of an international forum for comparative studies. In many respects, the founders’ vision has more than been realized fifty years later. For instance, a survey of the top twenty-five comparative and international law journals ranked The American Journal of Comparative Law among the top two (along with the American Journal of International Law), much higher on a weighted scale than the next rated journals. Crespi, 31 Int’l Law. 869, 874 (1997).

Furthermore, the Society is the designated national committee to the quadrennial international congresses organized by the International Academy of Comparative Law. This led in the mid-1990s to substantial growth in United States participation, which ever since has represented the largest foreign contingent at these meetings. Also significant for the ASCL’s international role is its collaboration with important sister organizations (as corresponding institutional members) elsewhere in the world. The Society is thus highly visible in comparative law on a global level.

While in these ways giving comparative law in the United States its international image, the Society is primarily devoted to promoting the comparative study of law in America. Through its annual meetings and the scholarly programs held on the occasion of those meetings, it provides the essential forum for communication, education, and networking among the active comparativists serving as directors of the ASCL, editors of the Journal, and other members. Most years as well the ASCL confers the Yntema Prize on the outstanding young author of an article appearing in the Journal. But there is more that can be done in an era when comparative and international studies in American law schools have expanded at such a rapid rate. As the Society reached its fiftieth year, it debated and implemented in 2000 a report prepared by its Long-Range Planning Committee that promises in the first years of the twenty-first century to further develop its membership base and invigorate programmatic activities.”

Source: https://comparativelaw.metapress.com/home/about.mpx

American Journal of Comparative Law

The American Journal of Comparative Law

Introduction

American Society of Comparative Law

From the Publisher

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