The question of legal ‘style’ is a central one in comparative law, as mainstream comparative law tends to downplay its importance. The kinds of comparative law scholarship that have attracted most attention in the last decades – the ‘harmonisation projects’ and the ‘legal origins’ literature (perhaps also the ‘legal formant’ literature) – indeed adopt a functionalistic approach to legal systems, whereby only the outcome of judicial decisions (and the factors causally feeding into them) matters – that is, their style does not. This narrow perspective has led to arguments in favour of harmonisation of law worldwide – the thesis according to which law everywhere does and should converge so as to facilitate transnational commerce and globalisation more generally. I propose to argue that legal style matters, as law is about much more than just resolving disputes. Specifically, it is also, and most importantly, a collective statement of identity. To illustrate, I plan on analysing some of the most striking stylistic differences between French and English law, and outline the different such statements emerging from them.

中文翻译：

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比较法律风格

法律“风格”问题是比较法的核心问题，因为主流比较法倾向于淡化其重要性。在过去几十年中最受关注的比较法学术——“协调计划”和“法律起源”文献（也许还有“法律共振峰”文献）——确实对法律制度采取了一种功能主义的方法，其中只有这结果司法判决（以及导致判决的因素）的重要性——也就是说，他们的风格才不是。这种狭隘的观点导致了支持全球法律协调的论点——根据这一论点，世界各地的法律确实并且应该趋同，以便更普遍地促进跨国商业和全球化。我建议认为法律风格很重要，因为法律不仅仅是解决纠纷。具体来说，它也是，也是最重要的，是一种集体的身份声明。为了说明这一点，我计划分析法国和英国法律之间一些最显着的风格差异，并概述从中出现的不同的此类陈述。