Samenvatting

For many legal scholars it goes without saying that legal and legal-philosophical theories originate in specific societal contexts and that this contextual character should always be taken into consideration. This implies, for example, that we should take the differences between the common law and civil law tradition seriously. This paper acknowledges the importance of such differences for legal analysis in general, but argues that this acknowledgement is less urgent for legal-philosophical analyses, since they primarily focus on what both traditions share, namely, a foundation in liberal-democratic principles.