13 - The Fabric of Normative Translation in Law

Summary

In this chapter, I argue that, in the process of the confluence in law whose importance H. Patrick Glenn emphasized in his great works on comparative legal traditions, the key element is what I call normative translation, its distinctive logic and its semantic consequences in the space of law. In particular, weaving normative translation in an extensive and reprising way shapes the fundamental conditions in the incessant process of the diffusion of law, as exemplary making of modern ideas of rights in Japanese law may indicate. Also, in so arguing, I show an academic possibility of the theoretical connection of the problems of the concept of law in legal philosophy to the studies of comparative law and of the transnational history of law.