1998/01/01 by Gunther Teubner, Günther Teubner · 545 citations
Social Sciences · #Black letter law #Civil law (Civil law) #Context (archaeology) #Epistemology #Faith #History #Law #Law in Society and Culture #Legal history #Legal opinion #Legal profession #Legal realism #Metaphor #Philosophy #Political science #Private law #Public law #Sociology #Unintended consequences
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1468-2230.00125
published in Modern Law Review 61(1), 11-32 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 1998/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Legal transplant is an unsatisfactory metaphor for describing the transfer of legal rules from one legal system to another. Instead, the metaphor of legal irritant better describes the impact on the legal system, and then a distinction between tight and loose coupling between law and its social context better explains the trajectory of social effects. The example of the importation of the civil law concept of good faith into British law illustrates the co‐evolving trajectories of the legal system and tightly coupled social systems which instead of furthering harmonisation of laws produces new divergences as their unintended consequences.