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Guerriero, Carmine --- "Legal Traditions and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence" [2011] ELECD 1067; in Parisi, Francesco (ed), "Production of Legal Rules" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Production of Legal Rules

Editor(s): Parisi, Francesco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848440326

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Legal Traditions and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence

Author(s): Guerriero, Carmine

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

9 Legal traditions and economic performance:
theory and evidence
Carmine Guerriero*



A legal tradition . . . is not a set of rules of law . . . rather it is a set of deeply rooted,
historically conditioned attitudes about . . . the proper organization and operation of
a legal system. The legal tradition relates the legal system to the culture of which it
is a partial expression. (Merryman, 1969, p. 2)

1. Introduction:APrimeronLegalTraditions
The law and the economy are profoundly influenced, in much of the world, by
either the civil or the common law legal tradition. A legal tradition or origin is
a bundle of well-defined institutions governing either the creation of the law or
the procedural style of dispute adjudication, and sharing a common "historical
background, [a common] characteristic mode of thought in legal matters [and a
common] ideology" (Zweigert and Kötz, 1998, p. 68). Common law originated
in thirteenth century England, and has been transplanted through colonization
to England's ex-colonies.1 Civil law has its roots in Roman law, and has been
imported through the Napoleonic codes to Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Spain and Portugal. These last four powers, along with France, spread it to the
Near East, Latin America, Northern Africa and Indochina. Structurally the two
traditions operate in different ways: while common law accords a key role to
precedents and allows more procedural discretion to lower adjudicating courts,
civil law relies on legal codes and bright-line adjudication rules (Zweigert and
Kötz, 1998).
Building on the wide ...