Research Frameworks in Comparative Public Law: Law as Category, as Source and as Variable

This chapter outlines some basic approaches to identifying frameworks of comparative research. It first argues that establishing comparative frameworks is a task ubiquitous to legal methodology. The framework is the decisive factor identifying the comparators and allowing assessment of similarities and differences. The framework allows identification of what to compare, how many commonalities the comparators have to start with, and how ‘foreign’ the two elements subject to comparison may be, so as to facilitate meaningful comparison. The chapter thus shows how comparative frameworks are flexible in serving the objectives defined by comparative scholars. This fluid feature of the framework of comparison and the relatively ubiquitous nature of the comparative method is the backdrop to the discussions in this chapter, critically reviewing three major frameworks identified by the objectives of the comparative approach: law as ‘category’, as ‘source’, and as ‘variable’.