On February 22, 2021, Professor Olivier Moréteau met on zoom with a group of doctoral candidates at the International Law Center (CEDIN) at the University of Paris Nanterre. He gave a presentation on the use the comparative method in doctoral research. He discussed comparison as a central element in the cognitive and scientific process, then offering a vade mecum and strategic advices, based on O. Moréteau, Premiers pas dans la comparaison des droits, in Jurilinguistique : entre langues et droits ; Jurilinguistics: Between Law and Language 407 (Jean-Claude Gémar, Nicholas Kasirer eds., Bruylant, Bruxelles, and Thémis, Montréal 2005).
The use of the comparative method was discussed in the context of the participants’ projects and experience. Professor Moréteau insisted that the functional approach, though criticized in contemporary scholarship, is essential to the identification and formulation of the research question, then enabling the researcher to discuss the law in context, bringing in history, sociology, and any dimension of social and human sciences, and even hard science.
