Comparative Legal Traditions

The first section on civil law tradition is good. It provides a sense of the complexity of history from Justinian to the great 19c civil codes of France and Germany and their areas of influence in Latin America etc, along with what these countries' systems have in common, and the convergence with Anglo notions in 20c. The essense of civil law seems here to be a certain formalism, emphasizing private law conceived in 3 parts (persons, property, contract) and downplaying the state, dating back to Institutes. The common law section was much less useful to me -- it's a different conception, primarily about the peculiarities of practicing law in England today. The third section is about the attempt to create a unified jurisprudence of Europe; I didn't read it.