INTRODUCTION
In 2006, I provided a chapter on the development of comparative law in Great Britain for the first edition of the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law, edited by Mathias Reimann and Reinhard Zimmermann. I linked the growth of comparative legal studies in later nineteenth-century Britain to the development of the British Empire. I pointed to two phenomena that seemed to me significant: first, the practical desire – represented by the foundation of the Society of Comparative Legislation in 1894 – to gather information about legislation in the British colonies and dominions and the United States of America; and second, the need to train men in what were called ‘Mohammedan’ and ‘Hindu’ laws to ensure the efficient administration of justice in the British Empire. Putting aside any reflections on the suitability of concepts of Hindu and Mohammedan law as conceived by the colonial British, this reveals the potentially plural nature of law and laws in the British Empire …
John W Cairns, Civil-Law Systems, Judges, and the British Empire, Tulane European and Civil Law Forum volume 37 pp 81-105 (2022).
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