Class Compared Legal Systems

The curricular unit aims to introduce the theme of comparing Rights/Legal Orders into the curricular plan of the Law degree. The curricular unit, framed as it is, in the second year of the degree, aims to raise students' awareness of the importance of knowledge of foreign legal orders, also as a way of expanding and deepening their knowledge and understanding of other ways of understanding, systematizing and carrying out Law, and thus contributing to a better and more consistent assimilation of the legal dimension and, specifically, the framework and identity of the Portuguese legal system.

Not applicable

I-Comparative Law: notion and object; modalities (macro-comparison/micro-comparison); methodology (the problem of the method); historical framework; nature and place of comparative law; functions attributed to comparative law. II-Legal systems and main current legal traditions: families of Rights: legal systems grouped by affinities; main contemporary legal families or traditions: classification criteria; hybrid legal systems; phenomenon of globalization and legal pluralism: legal transplants, ethnic implants, glocalization. III-Western legal family and its subsystems: Roman-Germanic legal systems (civil law); Anglo-Saxon legal system (common law); comparative analysis between civil law/common law legal systems. IV-Islamic legal family: Islam and sharia; V-Other legal systems: African traditional rights; Hindu Law; Chinese Law.

The curricular unit will proceed methodologically through the combined route of the expository method and critical analysis and discussion of national and foreign jurisprudence and practical examples.

Almeida, Carlos Ferreira de, Carvalho, Jorge Morais, Introdução ao Direito Comparado, 3ª Edição, Coimbra, Almedina, 2017.