Book excerpt: "Global Legal Traditions: Comparative Law for the 21st Century explores four legal traditions from around the world, both Western (German civil law and English common law) and non-Western (Chinese law and Islamic law). The book opens by focusing on European-based civil law, represented by German law, before moving on to the common law legal tradition seen in English law. Some comparative law casebooks and study guides stop with Western law but Global Legal Traditions continues by turning to the study of a secular non-European legal tradition by examining Chinese law, or more specifically the law of the People's Republic of China. The book's final section covers the non-state, religion-based legal tradition found in Islamic law, both in its pre-state form and how Islamic law manifests itself within the confines of sovereign state powers. Each part contains seven chapters intended to enable students to draw comparisons and make distinctions between the legal traditions under review. Each part includes five chapters covering common topics: history and development of the legal tradition; political process; judicial process; legal actors and legal education; and civil law. The remaining two chapters for each part focus on a legal subject most relevant to that legal tradition"--