中国民法典物权编在世界物权法的位置——量化比较法路径

Positioning Chinese Property Law in the World:A Quantitative Comparative Law Approach

传统的法系研究将世界部分国家分为两种到数种不等的法系,并以一个或少数抽象标准,得出结论。这些研究都采用了操作步骤并不清晰的方法论。本文提倡量化的法系研究方法论,以具体而数量庞大的标准(170个),关注于一个部门法(物权法),采用新的统计方法,画出世界128个法域的物权法的法系树形图。每个法域都在树形图的一根树枝上,依据其相似程度逐渐合并到越来越"粗"的树干上。依据此方法可以画出包含任何数量的法系,而本文选择以10个法系的区分方式作鸟瞰描述的标准。2018年中国民法典物权编一审稿,规范密度仍低,是极少数无法稳定归类为某个法系的国家之一。本文的主要方法发现中国最接近俄罗斯法系,其次是德国法系。

Traditional comparative law researches divide property laws in several dozen countries in the world into two to several legal families on the basis of one or a few abstract criteria.All these researches adopt black-box methodologies.This article champions a quantitative comparative law approach,using cutting-edge statistical methods and concrete and numerous criteria(170 to be exact)to study one legal field(property law),and eventually producing a dendrogram(i.e.a legal family tree)consisting of 128 jurisdictions.Each jurisdiction occupies a branch in the legal family tree,and branches combine with one another sooner or later,depending on how similar the property laws in the jurisdictions are.This quantitative method can divide all the jurisdictions into any number of legal families.This article chooses 10 legal families to present the results.The first draft(made public in 2018)of the Book of Things of the Chinese Civil Code is relatively low-density in terms of specifying property doctrines,and is found to be one of the few jurisdictions that cannot be stably classified into a certain legal family.The main finding of this article is that China is closest to the Russian legal family and second-closest to the German legal family.