UCLA School of Law’s International and Comparative Law Program and Transnational Program on Criminal Justice co-hosted the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) in October. The two-day online event, among the most esteemed regular summits in the field, featured 25 panels on a range of comparative law topics and about 100 speakers from over 20 countries, including a great number of the world’s leading comparative law scholars. 

Centered on the theme of “Comparative Legal History,” the conference included two plenary panels: “What Is the Relationship Between Comparative Law and Legal History,” which was chaired by UCLA Law Professor Stuart Banner, and “Comparative Legal Histories.” These panels featured comparative law and legal history luminaries, including Tamar Herzog from Harvard, Lauren Benton and James Whitman from Yale and many others.

The panels allowed scholars from the two fields to engage in a meaningful exchange to discern what they can learn from each other methodologically and substantively. This is of crucial importance at a time in which the United States is rethinking its relationship with other countries and legal systems, and reinterpreting and reckoning with its own history, including the history of its legal system.  

The meeting also included a timely panel on “Comparative Law, COVID-19 and Racial Justice” that discussed those issues from a global perspective. 

The UCLA Law programs were excited to partner with the ASCL, which is the leading organization in the United States promoting the comparative study of law, to deepen the engagement with this field as a complement to our already rich bench of comparative law scholars at UCLA Law, including Professors Máximo Langer, Stephen Gardbaum, Asli Bâli and Alex Wang.