Comparison, Translation and the Making of a Common European Constitutional Culture

This article presents an overview of the main methodological trends in Italian comparative legal culture, while framing them within the first steps of a European constitutional theory: this is a cultural science in which the comparison performs a function of integration between legal life-worlds, and in which a process of Europeanisation of national legal categories is matched by a process of re-nationalization of European legal categories. The contribution is divided into three parts: it analyzes first the main methodological concepts supported by the Italian doctrine of comparative constitutional law, it then presents the results achieved by the Italian doctrine of comparative private law, and it finally puts forward a procedural conception of comparison, as a cultural enterprise directed by the canon of translation.