The historical anh epistemological lsbstacles might they relate to the history of legal scienee? Ought legal knowledge to inelude notions such as symmetry, categorisation and dimension and, if so, will differences of categorisation and symmetry act as an obstacle to harmonisation? Then there is the whole problem of epistemological obstacles and scientific revolutions/*^ Have there been such obstacles and revolutions in the history of legal science and what might be the relevance of such processes to an understanding of modern problems of convergence and harmonisation? Or, to put the question from the viewpoint of epistemological obstacles, will there need to be an epistemological revolution before there can be convergence? And would such a revolution be desirable?*^° These are, evidently, big questions involving major theoretical themes. Nevertheless the present paper has tried to show that decision-making in the common law tradition raises epistemological questions that cannot be answered by reference to existing legal theorv and that what is needed is a new model capable not only of functioning at one and the same time within the facts and the law but of filling the void between legal propositions and the decision reached in any particular case. Certainly some civil lawyers such as Atias and Ivainer are now beginning to see that the codes do not explain the caselaw. Equally there are some comparatists who are no longer prepared to accept the trivialising tradition of comparative law.*^‘ Anti so, amongst comparative lawyers, legal historians and legal theorists, it may not be inopportune to reconsider legal knowledge within its historical and epistemological contexts. Such an exercise must, however, not be conducted just at the level of comparing caselaw models from different systems since the models themselves are fashioned by the various scientific paradigms, themselves a result of the history - or histories - of legal science.**- There are also fundamental theoretical issues involved and these must be tackled by comparatists. One might, accordingly, talk of a new dimension to comparative law, comparative legal theory, which could encapsulate the different kinds of theory produced by different legal mcntalitcs. And while the idea of comparative legal theory might seem, at the level of language, a contradiction in terms, at the level of mentalities it must now be appreciated that the difference of theory between say Kelsen and Dworkin is a result of differing legal histories and traditions.**^ Comparative legal theory, whose task is to investigate the epistemological dimensions of 169 G. Bachclard, La formation dc I'csprit saentifique (Vrin, 1938); T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 2nd. ed., 1970). Cf Atias, Epistémologie du droit, op.cit., pp. 93-103. Cf Legrand, op.cit. See e.g., Legrand, Comparatists-at-Lazc, op.cit.', and see also How to Compare Now (199f)) 16 Legal Studies 232. See generallv J. W. Jones, Historical Introduction to the Theory of La-tv (Oxford, 1940). See also G. Samuel, Science, Law and History: Historical Jurisprudence and Modern Legal Theory (1990) 41 Northern Ireland Legal Tfuartcrly 1. S3
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