The article deals with a topic recently examined by legal scholarship,
especially in Germany: how can the aims and methods of a new European
legal scholarship be defined? Such scholarship should embrace legal tools
from individual Member States, from their interrelationships and from the
interaction between Member States and the EU. In particular, the article
focuses on three issues: the urgent need for comparison; the reciprocal
interaction between national legal orders; and the relationship between contemporary
and ancient legal scholarship, the latter referring namely to the
model based on ius commune and the Savigny legacy. It is concluded that a
new European legal scholarship cannot be based on Roman tradition or on
19th-century models: this could not assist in the harmonization of different
domestic legal orders, nor in the description and interpretation of EU law.
European legal knowledge seeks to place its themes of study in the correct
historical context, and it should therefore improve its analysis of any legal,
economic and political issues relevant to law.