Abstract

This essay is not only aimed at outlining the relationship between comparison and history, but is part of a broader and more articulated debate on the relationship between law and other sciences that the journal DPCE hosted in a monographic issue entitled Law, Histories and Humanities. Geneaology and comparison. Unlike historians who use comparative law in their research, strictly following the canons of the method, comparatists, according to a doctrine, do not tend to dwell on the canons of the historical method and consequently make the research epistemologically uncertain. If scientifically understood comparison is always an explicit and argued process that, as Roberto Scarciglia recalls, must be placed in a context in which “the structures, institutions and rules of a given legal system have been formed and have sedimented over timeµ, what are the criteria through which history becomes indispensable for legal comparison?