a kaleidoscope of people tion-states, where particularities of national law were used to differentiate between them.7 Scholars of comparative law categorize the differences between legal systems to compare their particularities as legal families. The most prominent divide is between common law, civil law, and former socialist law. Famously, Zweigert and Kötz provide a standard categorization in their detailed work on legal families.8 Andrew Drzemczewski, Head of the Secretary General’s Monitoring Unit at the Council of Europe, has a modified classification which distinguishes between the Latin–Western Mediterranean legal family; the Western Central European Legal family; the Balkans; the Anglo-Scandinavian legal family; the Socialist legal family; and the Eastern Central European family. It is his classification that was used for the study.9 The methodology for the study of the ECtHRwas based on structured interviews with 38 judges and clerks, a field study (January–February 2002), and case law analyses of 153 cases (1998–2001) that invoked the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR Art. 8, 9 & 10).10 The methodology at the CJEUwas based on structured interviews with 25 judges and advocates general and field studies in 2008, 2009, and 2010, supplemented by case law analyses of selected cases that focused on human rights.11 The interviews explored the members of the courts’ individual backgrounds: who they were, their education, their language experience, and their career paths. They were asked about their daily work, interactions on the bench, legal families, integrating newcomers, and social encounters in court. As legal culture is based on ideas and values, the questions also addressed their vision and individual insights into 7 Today, with the growing importance of regional community values and legal systems that demand collective responses, we might be on the verge of the dissolution of national legal systems. Rainer Hofmann & Stefan Kandelbach (eds.), Law Beyond the State: Pasts and Futures (Frankfurt: Campus, 2016) discuss various visions and ideals of the law ‘beyond’ international law and possible future legal systems. 8 Konrad Zweigert & Hein Kötz, Introduction to Comparative Law(Oxford:OUP, 1998), 63 ff. In their classification they focus on private law. 9 Andrew Drzemczewski, ‘The Internal Organization of the European Court of Human Rights: The Composition of the Chambers and the Grand Chamber’, European Human Rights Law Review(2000), 237. 10 See Arold 2007, 5, especially 87 ff. 11 See Arold Lorenz et al. 2013, 5 301
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