Quantitative Methods in Comparative Law

Reviews / Votes

'Comparative law, as both an academic discipline and practice, has been blossoming for several years. [...] To produce original, insightful and impactful comparative law scholarship in such a crowded market is no easy task. A new work on the methodology of legal comparison by Pier Giuseppe Monateri and Mauro Balestrieri, Quantitative Methods in Comparative Law, manages to achieve just that by blending accurate empirical research, perceptive interdisciplinary analysis and innovative arguments.' -- Luca Siliquini-Cinelli, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 'Overall, the book offers an original and imaginative perspective, providing a fresh lens through which to view legal rules and legal systems as a whole. The authors' innovative approach introduces new ways of thinking about legal structures, emphasizing the importance of analysing friction within these systems.' -- Francesco Parisi and Donatella Porrini, Journal of International Economic Law 'Quantitative Methods in Comparative Law by Monateri and Balestrieri is a timely and thought-provoking research in the "transformative potential of data-driven decision-making". "Quantification", both authors contend, "has fundamentally altered the way we perceive and interact with the world" (p. 1). I could not agree more with them. Such changes have been facilitated by what I have termed the scientific state of mind, i.e. a fideistic attitude, according to which progress and economic development can only be achieved through quantitative methodologies. Such a quantitative frame, which "Measur[ed] the Immeasurable" and "Turn[ed] Law into Numbers", made this shift possible.' -- Matteo Nicolini, Comparative Public Law Review 'Does law exist? If it does, one nevertheless cannot see it. But what one can see, say these two leading Italian academics, is a whole range of quantifiable effects that attach to law. It is these empirical effects that the authors employ as a comparative methodological approach which, they argue, avoids the impressionistic models founded on culture and on 'ideological pipe dreams'. A controversial book? Undoubtedly so, but one that is so important and well argued that no serious comparative lawyer and (or) legal epistemologist will ever be able to ignore it.' -- Geoffrey Samuel, Kent Law School, UK 'Was our critical horizon not that of incommensurability, as the world order was insidiously overtaken by neoliberal "metric legality"? Taking us by complete surprise, this brilliant political-legal model of "friction theory" uses quantitative methods to understand social approaches to law and their (often perverse...) effects in the empirical world.' -- Horatia Muir Watt, Sciences Po Paris, France