The classification of legal systems. Taxonomy, education and progress of knowledge

Abstract

Legal systems can be classified according to various criteria, and the theory of legal families is just a project to classify legal systems among others. The purpose of this Article is to question the legitimacy of the classification of systems in general. As taxonomy is a scientific project common to many sciences, the Article analyses the objectives of taxonomy in biology and in chemistry and draws several lessons for legal science: 1) any classification is a contribution to knowledge and qualifies as fundamental research, 2) if taxonomy has important practical applications in life sciences, it is doubtful whether this is also the case for the classification of legal systems. Finally, unlike many authors, the Article concludes by rejecting the idea that this classification could at the very least be useful for law teaching.