Jusletter IT

The conservative way of doing comparative law has largely been supplanted by digital comparison. The functions, methods and aims of comparative law are, or should be, the same as ever but, the data that it is based on is now in a different form than before. Instead of reading printed books in academic libraries, it is possible to look for the foreign norms online. There are, however, problems with converting digital comparative information into true knowledge which meets the quality criteria of comparative law. In this article it is claimed that quantitative increase in available information does not necessarily lead to an increase in knowledge if the incommensurability of legal concepts and the specificity of the legal system remain unnoticed or ignored by the researcher. While in the past the barrier to information access was basically physical distance, with the new electronic data warehouses and the use of AI, physical distance has turned into informative distance. In the article it is discussed how to navigate through the myriad online sources of foreign law and what is the proper methodological framework of (digital) comparative law.