In the 1980s a very dynamic discourse was introduced regarding the concepts of legal cultures and alsolegal traditions. Different interpretations of those concepts popped up related to sociological or legal methods. This international discourse which started in the USafter the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and continued in Europe, inUK, France, Italy and also in Scandinavia, was comprehensive.23 The comparative perspective also became very important for this discourse. The Canadian comparatist H. Patrick Glenn (1940–2014) investigated the legal traditions of the world in a book first published in 2000 and then published in several revised editions. Glenn was interested in how oral legal traditions historically have been transferred from generation to generation. He started out with the indigenous peoples and their legal traditions and then he identified the world religions as examples of global legal traditions.24 His vast comparative project was heavily criticized as he mostly had used published second-hand sources. The critique led him to progressively nuance his positions. The volume underlined the importance of law and religions – also a current discourse related to legal history. These discourses were very important for the contextualisation of legal historical research since the 1990s.25 If comparative law in 1965 was an almost embryonal discipline within modern law, today, in our diversified world, it has developed to be a necessary instrument for identifying law. Historical perspectives and historical argumentation are today more relevant in legal scholarship than thirty years ago, around the time of the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, which introduced the European Union, implemented in 1995. In most of the European memberstates these events marked a paradigm shift for the interpretation of 129 kjell å modéer 22 Good introductions to history of knowledge: Johan Östling, David Larsson Heidenblad, Anna Hammar, Karl Nordberg (eds.), Circulation of Knowledge: Explorations in the History of Knowledge, Oslo 2018; Johan Östling, David Larsson Heidenblad, Anna Hammar, Forms of Knowledge: Developing the History of Knowledge, Lund 2020; Johan Östling, Niklas Olsen, David Larsson Heidenblad (eds.), Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas and Aspirations, Oxford 2020. 23 David Nelken (ed.), Comparing Legal Cultures, Aldershot 1997; David Nelken &Johannes Feest (eds.), Adapting Legal Cultures, Oxford 2001. 24 H. Patrick Glenn, The Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable diversity in law,Oxford 2014. 25 Kjell Å Modéer, ”Religionens plats i det offentliga rummet: rättshistoriska och rättskulturella perspektiv” Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift 2005.
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