law émigré max rheinstein (1899–1977) to see Rheinstein in Chicago, where he was very active in creating astateside international network of scholars of comparative law. Vivian Curran, in an article about the German law émigrés in the US during and after SecondWorld War, emphasizes their dual identities and their different attitudes to the methodology of comparative law and to differences and similarities in the post-war discourses.7 The German law émigrés had an almost existential relation to their work, excluded from their native citizenship and their homeland, yet included in the legal culture and identity in their new homeland, whether the UK or the US.8 They were obliged to learn a new legal system, a new cognitive system, and a new career system. To succeed in this, in Rheinstein’s own words, they had to ‘try to forget that you have ever studied law’.9 He detailed the difficulties for a German jurist in understanding English legal jargon for German colleague in 1950, explaining that ‘English jurists in general only talk about problems they are interested in, and all so-called “background knowledge” they presume as known or regard as self-evident, that you not talk about at all. This type of writing made English and American legal works extraordinarily difficult to comprehend.’10 Only German law émigrés who learnt their new homeland’s legal system would find success, the saying went. On the other hand, they were per definition comparatists. They knew two legal systems from the inside. It was because of their inclusion in American legal culture during and after the Second World War that they became universalists. They were, as Lawrence Friedman has it, convergence guys. As comparative scholars, svenska juristers möten med amerikansk rätt’, in Marianne Dahlén & Rolf Nygren (eds.), Arbetslinjer och långa linjer: Vänbok till Mats Kumlien(Uppsala: Iustus, 2016), 150. 7 Vivian Grosswald Curran, ‘Cultural Immersion, Difference and Categories in U. S. Comparative Law’, American Journal of Comparative Law46/1 (1998), 43–92. 8 Jack Beatson & Reinhard Zimmermann (eds.), Jurists Uprooted: German-Speaking Emigré Lawyers in Twentieth Century Britain(Oxford:OUP, 2004). 9 Max Rheinstein, ‘Comparative Law: Its Functions, Methods and Usages’, Arkansas LawReview22 (1968), 421. 10 University of Chicago Library (UChicago), Chicago, Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), Max Rheinstein Papers, Max Rheinstein (MR) to Paul Koschaker, 21 Mar. 1950. 11 Kjell Å. Modéer, ‘The Historical Roots of European Legal Culture: Transitions Due to Diversities and Differences’, Juridiska Föreningens i Finland Tidskrift 5 (2010), 493 ff. 257
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