lit\' (elsewhere) to a l'2uropean eode. 1 le insists that with transplants I ha\e in mind legal rules and primarily statiitor\' rules. He quotes m\’ Lcgul I'rniisphnits io~). He writes that 1 claim "the picture that emerge[s] [i]s of continual massi\ e borrowing [...] of rules." M\' sentence actually stated "the picture that emerged was of continual massiye borrowing and longeyit\' of rules and institutions." I ha\e continualh’ o\ er more than a quarter of a centurx’ insisted that what are borrowed and can he borrowed are legal rules, principles, institutions, and e\ en structures. One e.xample of the last is enough: the hc^rrowing of the structure of the Roman sect)nd centur\’ Institutes (laius by the si.xth centurx’ Byzantine ofJustinian, the dependence onJustinian of (mainly) i^th century histitutes local law throughout western Kurope, and from there to modern ci\ il codes. Indeed, the notorious crux of English and American legal historians, the structure of Blackstone's Commaituries o)i the Luirs of Euglmul (I76^-I76y), turns out to he mainly the result of Blackstone's horrowing of the flawed attempt of Dionysius (lOthofredus (i•,■49-1622) to set out the structure ofJustinian's Institutes.'' [I suspect that Pierre Legrand's exaggerated emphasis on m\’ interest in rules’' is because rules \ ery oh\ iously can he, and are, copied from those of another society. But this copying would not for him (I think) be a transplant because the cultural ethos of the two societies are different. If I am correct then to a large extent he and I are talking at crexss-purposes, using the word 'transplant' in different senses. For me if one societ\’ copies the rules, institutions, concepts and structures of another, then it is profoundly influenced by that societ\'s law. It is then important for an understanding t)f legal change and the relationship of law to society to kneny what rules, etc., can 26 See, e.g., Alan Watson, The Making of the Civil taw(Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 62ff. 27 See above all Watson, Roman Law, pp. i66ff. 28 See, e.g., 'Impossibility,' pp iiiff. 116
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=