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1997 Utah L. Rev. 259 (1997)
Stranger than Paradise: Identity & Politics in Comparative Law

handle is hein.journals/utahlr1997 and id is 269 raw text is: Stranger than Paradise: Identity & Politics in Comparative Law Giinter Frankenberg I. NEW SrES FOR COMPARISON Nothing compares, nothing compares to you, Sin6ad O'Connor nostalgically exclaims.' Indeed, Albania is likely to qualify as a place stranger than paradise, stranger than Cleveland or, for that matter, Utah. Jammed into a rough and narrow space between the Mediterranean and former Yugoslavia, at the periphery of the pe- riphery of Europe, and sliced up by several mountain ridges, Alba- nia never promised easy access or riches. Despite its geographic xenophobia, Albania's history is stamped by invasions. To this very day, some 400,000 bunkers bizarrify the austere scenery and ironi- cally testify to the paranoia and ideological exceptionalism of a Stalinist-Maoist regime in constant fear of infiltration from without. After the demise of Enver Hoxha's incompetent cadres that drove the country beyond the point of bankruptcy, a still impover- ished Albania has recently joined the post-socialist societies in transition to the happy life in an environment where everything is marketable and gained or lost under the rule of law. Happiness, at least new irrigation systems, more productive milking machines, spiritual redemption, and legal codes-this is what the motley bunch of developers, self-declared modernizers all of them, who now freely infiltrate the country, are presently importing. No small number of them motivated by a merely strategic interest in their project, and many secretly or openly wishing they were located in other-less marginal or more exotic-countries such as Georgia, * Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitit Frankfurt am Main. I am very grateful to Dean Teitelbaum and the organizers of the conference-Karen Engle, Mitch Lasser, Ileana Porras, and Tony Anghie-for inviting me to this inspiring meeting of the minds I am indebted to the organizing group as well as to Marie-Claire Belleau, Nathaniel Berman, Jorge Esquirol, David Kennedy, and Duncan Kennedy for having included me over the past years in the project of looking for New Approaches to Comparative & International Law. To Rolf Knieper I owe many insights into the pitfalls and pleasures of legal consulting. Last, but definitely not least, I would like to thank Michael Blecher for his on-site support and his untiringly cooperative spirit. 1. SINBAD O'CONNOR, Nothing Compares 2 U, on I Do NOT WANT WHAT I HAVEN'T GOT (Ensign Records 1990). 259

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