nale is not set out, or circumstances may make the rationale irrelevant or worse. Even top legal scholars will discuss the rules and effects of an institution such as theft at Rome or the Rule against Perpetuities in the U.S.A., with no attempt to explain why the institution has the parameters it has, or even the usefulness of the institution. For English law I adduce a paradox. Sir Edward Coke, a man of great authority, claimed in the th century that one could not know law without knowing the reasons for it. Yet until very recently, it was forbidden to refer in court to Hansard, the verbatim report of speeches in the British Parliament. Both views existed side-by-side. This need for authority also accounts in large measure for the longterm survival of legal rules that are harmful to the elite who are well able to have the law changed. The need for authority is so extreme that it also accounts in large measure for the prevalence of legal transplants, the most fruitful source of legal change. When necessary, the authority will even be feigned. I give one example of the effect of the need for authority on borrowing. In situations that were remarkably similar and related to navigable rivers, both Scots law and South African law turned to Rome where geographical and climatic conditions were different and where, above all, the Roman law was unknowable. Then for the U.S.A. , I content myself with one example, the notorious Rule against Perpetuities in property law which is so complicated that the Supreme Court of California held it was not negligence for an attorney of ordinary standards to fail to understand it, thus causing loss to his clients. Understanding of the Rule is vital for any will that is made where the provisions are complex in the slightest. It plays a decisive role in the movie, Body Heat. It arose in England in very different economic, political circumstances, with (perhaps) specific rationales: yet some highly-regarded American books on property law for first-year students feel no need to explain its rationale. The separa-
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