I can relate to that. Having graduated from the New York University School of Law in 1971, I later migrated to Denmark, and in my first year at the University of Copenhagen I confronted the (for me) no less bewildering Danish system and legal lingo.

I am not suggesting that my own exploits compare with those of the ultimately illustrious Schlesinger, but rather that, in switching continents and legal systems, we each got off to an understandably bumpy start. Just as Schlesinger had to adapt to the (for him) strange American rule that a promise is not binding unless supported by something called ‘consideration,’ ⁹¹⁹919. See generally E.A. Farnsworth, Contracts (4^th ed. 2004) § 2.2 with n. 1, citing In re Owen, 303 S.E.2d 351 (1983): ‘Consideration is the glue that binds the parties to a contract together.’ Emphasis added here. I had to wrap my New York lawyer’s head around the ‘opposite’ Danish rule, that promises are binding without any such glue. ⁹²⁰920. See Mads Bryde Andersen, Grundlæggende aftaleret (Basic Contract Law) (4th ed. 2013) at 82 (in Danish law a promise is binding ‘by itself’; no consideration (modydelse) is required). Compare Farnsworth and Owen, preceding note.

Traditionally, comparative legal studies have focused on whether legal systems throughout the world are (1) fundamentally similar, such that apparent differences are superficial in nature, justifying universalist conclusions; or (2) fundamentally different, such that apparent similarities are misleading, and universalist conclusions unwarranted. ⁹²¹921. See Curran, supra n. 2, at 18.

For Schlesinger and his generation of ‘post-war’ comparatists, the similarities were clearly the most important thing. Indeed, during his tenure at Cornell (1948-1975), Schlesinger championed the ‘common core’ approach to comparative law. To this end, he and his colleagues (nine men who spent ten years focused on the ‘mechanics’ of offer and acceptance) ⁹²²922. Bertram F. Willcox, ‘Rudolf B. Schlesinger World Lawyer,’ 60 Cornell Law Review 919, 925 (1975), also at http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol60/iss6/. searched not only for a common core, but also for a universal language of law, a juristic Esperanto. ⁹²³923. Curran supra n. 2, at 29. These universalist themes live on today in several soft law codification projects, ⁹²⁴924. Accord Curran, id. at 25-26. including (‘on the shoulders of Schlesinger’) the Trento Common Core of European Private Law (1993), ⁹²⁵925. Schlesinger himself described his project as seeking »to redirect the emphasis of Comparative Law toward similarity rather than difference«. See Vivian Curran, ‘On the Shoulders of Schlesinger: The Trento Common Core of European Private Law Project,’ European Review of Private Law (2003), at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1297431. as