The American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL), formerly the American Association for the Comparative Study of Law, is a society dedicated to the study of comparative law, foreign law, and private international law. It was founded in 1951, and was admitted to American Council of Learned Societies in 1995.
The ASCL publishes theThe American Journal of Comparative Law on a quarterly basis. It was established at the University of Michigan Law School in 1952, where ASCL Vice President and first Editor-in-Chief Hessel E. Yntema was a professor. Yntema served as Editor-in-Chief until his death in 1966. The journal moved from Michigan to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971, but returned in 2003. It is now being co-hosted by the Institute of Comparative Law (McGill University) and the Georgetown University Law Center. The Institute of Comparative Law’s Director, Helge Dedek, and Georgetown University Law Center’s James Feinerman and Franz Werro, currently serve as Co-Editor-in-Chiefs.