ease of borrowing legal rules, coneepts, institutions, and structures. Perhaps this is natural enough: for man)', law is still the "spirit of the people."' For sociologists of law the concept must, indeed, he anathema.^ As I wrote in the Preface, one of the two mainsprings of this hook was Jan Smits' meeting in Maastricht in Ma\', 2000. \\ hat follows in this chapter is primarily a rather modified \ ersit)n of mv talk. Jan Smits asked me to talk about mv book Legal 'Vnuisplants' spedfically in the conte.xt of Pierre l.egrand's critical article, ''Fhe Impossibility of "Legal "Fransplants""' I was both delighted and reluctant to respond. Delighted, because a hook written in ly'^o, published in 1974 mainh’ to silence plus extreme disapproxal, is now regarded as somehowsignificant. I was reluctant because 1 feared 1 would misrepresent Pierre l.egrand's \ iews as much as he misrepresents mine. I confess that in large measure I do not comprehend what he is about. I see no substance, just big words, in his article. Fo begin with, 1 wish to state frankly that 1 beliexe Legrand's \ lews are old-fashioned. I le appears to believe that legal philosophy is the key to understanding law in society. Legal historx', including comparative legal history, has little place in his scheme of things. Underlying his approach is the unspoken - yet at times almost explicit - \ iew that law is the "spirit of the people." At the \er\' least, for him a legal rule in one country expressed in exactly the same wording in another is not the same law. Ctxntext is ex ervt3 See supra, pp. 45ff. 4 See, e.g., William M. Evan, Social Structure and Law, (Newbury Park, 1990), pp. 34f. 5 First edition (Edinburgh, 1974); second edition (Athens, Ga, 1993). 6 4 Maastricht journal of European and Comparative Law (1997), pp. iiiff. As a result of my remit this chapter is diffuse; it ranges from evidence of massive transplants that have taken place, to my disagreement with Pierre Legrand, to the role of codes in legal transplants, to surviving differences after codification for a multiplicity of jurisdictions, to the example of the U.S.A. Not all of these topics can be best treated one after the other but are at times intermingled. 102
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