Traveling Laws: On Comparison-at-Law’s Metaphors and Cultural Techniques

Abstract Legal comparatists have attempted to conceptually grasp the traveling of laws since the field’s institutional inception. Tellingly, one finds ubiquitously undergirding such intellectual efforts—and the resistance thereto—a range of what Hans Blumenberg has once dubbed as “background metaphors,” such as: transplants, grafting, cross-fertilization, migration, translation, reception, transfer, among others. There is not a single investigation on the subject matter pursued under the auspices of metaphorology. This contribution addresses this gap. Harkening back to Blumenberg’s proposal, whose fundamental appreciation underscores the fact that metaphors carry a history in a more radical sense than concepts, but also harvesting from the embrace and revisitation of Blumenberg’s claims by the literature on cultural techniques, this argument focuses on the metaphor of traveling laws. As it explores how the curve of this metaphor’s history provides us with key insights into the radical multiplicity of laws and their movement, it grounds this excavatory enterprise in a concrete undertaking: the pursuit of a case study concerning the traveling of environmental laws between Brazil and Germany.