Legal Transplants: An Interdisciplinary Approach

• Department of Law

The Inaugural Law Faculty Seminar of the 2023-24 academic year begins with a presentation by Law Professor Mathias Siems.

Abstract

Almost fifty years ago, Alan Watson’s ‘Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law’ (1974) was published. Since then, the use of the term 'legal transplants' has increased substantially, in particular in recent years. The literature has also broadened the scope of analysis to many further aspects. For example, it has discussed how legislative drafting can contribute to the design of effective legal transplants, what role courts have in applying the transplanted rules, and whether the diverse understanding of rules in the transplant country pose a challenge to the notion of legal transplants. Moreover, different from Watson, many of the recent discussions relate the topic of legal transplants to the literature in other academic fields, such as history, international relations, development studies, institutional economics and political science. As a result, 'legal transplants' are today a multifaceted topic which I will explore in a monograph, under contract with Oxford University Press. This Faculty Seminar will be based on the first two draft chapters of this manuscript.