When it was first published in 1974, Legal Transplants sparked both praise and outrage. Alan Watson's argument challenges the long-prevailing notion that a close connection exists between the law and the society in which it operates. His main thesis is that a society's laws do not usually develop as a logical outgrowth of its own experience. Instead, he contends, the laws of one society are primarily borrowed from other societies; therefore, most law operates in a society very different from the one for which it was originally created. Utilizing a wealth of primary sources, Watson illustrates his argument with examples ranging from the ancient Near East, ancient Rome, early modern Europe, Puritan New England, and modern New Zealand. The resulting picture of the law's surprising longevity and acceptance in foreign conditions carries important implications for legal historians and sociologists. The law cannot be used as a tool to understand society, Watson believes, without a careful consideration of legal transplants.
Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law Alan Watson
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The Society notes with sadness the passing on November 7, 2018, of Professor Alan Watson at the age of 85. He was a giant in the fields of Roman and comparative law, as the Society recognized when it awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. In 2005, his colleagues at the University of Belgrade established in his honor the Alan Watson Foundation, dedicated to international cooperation in the fields of comparative law and legal history. Curiously his given name was actually William Alexander Jardine Watson, but he was known to everyone as Alan Watson, and that is the name under which most of his numerous articles and books were published.
Alan Watson's theory of legal transplants was pioneering and innovative. It moved comparative law beyond ideas of legal families and legal systems by providing both a tool and a metaphor for examining hybrid, or mixed, legal systems. However, socio-legal comparativists in particular criticised his approach because of its failure adequately to acknowledge the importance of legal culture in transplant theory. As a hybrid legal system Japan provides an operative laboratory of comparative law. This paper examines jury trial to evaluate Watson's theory. It concludes by offering a new threefold categorisation of legal transplants.
[23] See Gunther Frankenberg, Critical Comparisons:Re-Thinking Comparative Law, 26 HARVARD INT'L L.J. 411, 416-421 (1985)(characterizing comparative law scholars as "Cinderellas" in the step-family oflegal academia).
[25] The University of Trento, Italy, whose lawfaculty hosts brilliant comparative lawyers, is currently running a researchproject seeking to define "The Common Core of European Private Law." Theproject is conducted by academicians from all Member States and enjoys thecontribution of non-European comparativists. On the result-free approach of theCommon Core project, see Ugo Mattei and Mauro Bussani, The Trento Common CoreProject, July 6, 1995, in CARDOZO ELECTRONIC LAW BULLETIN[WWW.gelso.unitn.it/card-adm/Common.core]. It has been noted, however, that"[l]egal comparativists have often very strongly argued in favour of [...]European harmonization of private law." THOMAS WILHELMSSON, SOCIAL CONTRACT LAWAND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 2 (1995). 2ff7e9595c
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