In the last decades, the number of global initiatives comparing and ranking states according to the quality of their legal infrastructures have constantly risen. Nowadays, global legal indicators measure, and have an impact on states’ performances in a variety of field – from the fight to corruption to investment protection, from the level of rule of law to the respect for human rights. In spite of the growth and success of such initiatives, they have largely gone unnoticed by comparative lawyers, who have limited themselves to criticizing the ‘legal origins’ theory and the related ‘Doing Business Reports’ yearly published by the World Bank. Yet, the world of global legal indicators extends well beyond the activities of those who subscribe to the ‘legal origins’ idea. The aim of this article is therefore to show the many lines of exploration which might take comparative lawyers beyond what they have so far studied.
