he copied, and with what changes either in nature or in operation. At the \ ery least, gi\ en the enormous amount ctf copy ing or horrowing, we must admit that foreign swstems are treated hy lawmakers as \ er\’ \ aluahle tools for changing their own system, d o repeat: for me the main \ alue of comparati\e law as an academic discipline is the insights it gi\es into legal change and into the relationship td law and society.] Legrand oddly emphasizes my insensiti\ it\’ to differences, hut in the \ er\’ same paragraph of Legal Vrausplaats that he misrepresents, 1 w rote (p. 107): "the preyalence of borrow ing suggested a kew to understanding jiatterns and change. Systems related to one another through a series of borrow ings might in their similarities and differences indicate the impetus to growth." Indeed, the significance of partial acceptance, partial non-acceptance, of foreign law for understanding legal change is one of the main themes of m\' Legal Transplants:* |1 would like to attempt an analogy. 1 am a tomato grower. 1 have plastic trav'S each w ith 24 small containers filled with a soil mi.\. Into each container I place a tomato seed, which I proceed to water and fertilize. When the plants are ahcnit six centimeters tall, 1 sell them. buyer rakes one, pinches it out (vf its container, and plants it in his yard. 'The plant soon stretches out its roots into the surrounding, very different soil. I'he purchaser fertilizes it wirh his own, different from mine, fertilizer. The tomato plant is now in a very different ethos on which its future depends. Ev en the sun strikes it differently, fhe tomato plant may flourish or ev en wither. Now to put a question not considered by the Cireek philosophers. Is the tomato plant the same plant as it was under my care.^ If I understand Pierre Legrand correctly his answer is No! d’here has been no transplant: transplants are impossible.] 29 See, e.g., pp. i9f., 2iff., 27ff.. 5off., 69, 7iff., 79ff., 82ff., 97, io5f. 117
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