We can only claim to understand another legal system when we know the context surrounding the positive law in which lawyers are trained. To avoid ethnocentricity and superficiality we must go beyond judicial decisions doctrinal writings and the black-letter law of codes and statutes and probe the 'deeper structures' where law meets cultural political socio-economic factors. It is only when we acquire such awareness and knowledge of the critical factors affecting both the backgrounds and implications of rules that it becomes possible to control the present and possibly future developments of the world's legal institutions. This collection of essays aims to provide the reader with a fundamental understanding of the dynamic relationship between the law and its cultural political and socio-economic context.

The many cultures of tort liability / Mauro Bussani and Marta Infantino -- Tort law and conflict of laws / Symeon C. Symeonides -- Tort law and human rights / Eric A. Engle -- Tort and crime / Matthew Dyson -- Liability rules : an economic taxonomy / Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci and Francesco Parisi -- Tort law and insurance / Ina Ebert -- Alternative compensation schemes from a comparative perspective / Daniel Jutras -- The architecture of the common and civil law of torts : an historical survey / James Gordley -- The bounds between negligence and strict liability / Franz Werro and Erdem Büyüksagis -- Professional liability / Ewoud Hondius -- Product liability / Mathias Reimann -- Causation theories and causation rules / Marta Infantino -- A comparative-law sketch of pure economic loss / Vernon Valentine Palmer -- Tort damages for non-economic losses : personal injury / Stephen D. Sugarman -- Tort law in Japan / Emi Matsumoto -- Chinese tort law : between tradition and transplants / Hao Jiang -- Customary tort law in sub-Saharan Africa / Dominic N. Dagbanja -- Islamic tort law / Abdul Basir Bin Mohamad -- Tort law in Latin America / Marco de Morpurgo.