part i • supreme courts • serge dauchy rative perspective, as part of a collaboration between the universities of Frankfurt andLille.18 Theyculminated in a large-scale project, Mit Freundschaft oder mit Recht.19 A third major development is the extension of comparative research on central courts of justice to embrace colonial experiences. The history of colonial justice and colonial law has been the subject of many studies in the past decade.20 This history is mostly marked by a lack of legal tradition and legal culture, the absence of trained or experienced jurists, the impossibility of applying the usual procedural rules (both due to geographical and climatic conditions and to a lack of staff), and, most important, isolation from the metropolis. Research has therefore often implemented the theories of legal (and institutional) transplant or hybridization. Some have also explored the idea that the colonies may have been a laboratory for experiments with legal and judicial solutions adapted to colonial realities or even transposable to the metropolis, including the simplification of procedural rules, the promotion of alternative methods of dispute resolution, the establishment of jurisdictions with extended jurisdiction (and often regulatory competences) or, as the example of New France showed in the seventeenth century, the unification and systematization of private law. Characteristic of that extension to the colonies is the project coordinated by Remco van Rhee and Mark Godfrey, The comparative history of central courts in Europe and the Americas. Last but not least, in methodological terms the various national initiatives have benefited from the history mainstream. It would have been impossible to analyse so much data without new computer technologies. Quantitative methods, implemented by Filippo Ranieri as early as the seventies, made it possible to compile statistics on the profession and 18 Albrecht Cordes & Serge Dauchy (eds.),Eine Grenze in Bewegung: Öffentliche und private Justiz imHandels- und Seerecht/Une frontière mouvante: Justice privée et justice publique en matières commerciales et maritimes (Schriftendes Historischen Kollegs, 18; Berlin:DeGruyter,Oldenbourg, 2012). 19 Albrecht Cordes (ed.), Mit Freundschaft oder mit Recht? Inner- und außergerichtliche Alternativen zur kontroversen Streitentscheidungen im 15–19 Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015). 20 For an initial overview, see B. Durand, Introduction historique au droit colonial (Paris: Economica, 2015). 92
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