Introduction to legal systems / edited by J.D.M.Derrett

PROFESSIONALLY the law student seldom has any need to know foreign systems of law. Conflicts of law arise (a topic in which he usually interests himself readily), but in practice, as often as not, a specialist in that class of work is consulted. But while the student is a student he participates in education. Much of that process, inevitably, consists in memorising rules and learning how to apply them. But what is it all about? The answer must be much the same in principle whether one asks in London, in Buenos Aires, in Cairo, or Sydney. To elicit the answer doubtless one must find the wavelength, as it were, on which one's informant communicates; but what he attempts to tell relates broadly to the same complex of factors against which litigation has to be seen. A law exists in relation to litigation (actual or hypothetical), just as answers must be taken to operate in relation to their questions.