The study of legal history, as pursued at universities throughout Europe, albeit with considerable differences in both scope and quality, is primarily a history of the respective national legal systems. An institute that focuses on trans-national comparisons and the portrayal of European legal development does not regard itself as a rival to these research structures, but as a complementary and supportive facility whose function, above all, is one of co-ordinating and strengthening communication.

This commitment is underpinned by the favourable structural situation, especially suited to a comparative approach to legal history, that exists for the institute under the umbrella of the Max Planck Society. This is particularly true when it comes to major long-term research projects of a kind that can rarely be undertaken on such a scale at universities. In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, in the wake of the structural changes that swept the universities in the 60s and 70s, and the new theoretical and methodological approaches that took hold in most faculties of law, the discipline of legal history did survive as a component part of the so-called foundation course for students. Yet given its borderline position at the interface of law, history and the social sciences, legal history was constantly up against more practically oriented and ‘exam relevant’ subjects. Existing resources were often absorbed by more educationally-oriented tasks. Apart from theory, research at university institutes of legal history, even where these are supported by third party funding, is generally limited, short term or restricted to individual projects. The Max Planck Institute, on the other hand, can offer what is needed for the development and implementation of new concepts and can promote academic scheduling with real potential for a wider range of research projects – in other words, a flexible research approach by a group of researchers and scholars from different disciplines, of different nationalities and with different interests with just the right degree of continuity in terms of staff and institutional framework.