Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law Volume 14 Issue 1 Article 3 2008 Approaching Comparative Company Law David C. Donald Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/jcfl Part of the Banking and Finance Law Commons, and the Business Organizations Law Commons Recommended Citation David C. Donald, Approaching Comparative Company Law , 14 Fordham J. Corp. & Fin. L. 83 (2008). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/jcfl/vol14/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. APPROACHING COMPARATIVE COMPANY LAW David C. Donald∗ ABSTRACT This Article identifies several common errors that occur in comparative law analyses, offers guidelines to help avoid such errors, and provides a framework for studying the company laws of three major jurisdictions. Part I discusses some of the problems that can arise in comparative law and offers a few points of caution that can be useful for practical, theoretical and legislative comparative law. Part II examines well-known examples of comparative analysis gone astray in order to demonstrate the utility of heeding the outlined points of caution. Part III provides an example of using functional definitions to demarcate the topic “company law,” offering an “effects” test to determine whether a given provision of law should be considered as functionally part of the rules that govern the core characteristics of companies.