Adapting Legal Cultures

This exciting collection looks at the theory and practice of legal borrowing and adaptation in different areas of the world: Europe,the USA and Latin America, S.E. Asia and Japan. Many of the contributors focus on fundamental theoretical issues. What are legal transplants? What is the role of the state in producing socio-legal change? What are the conditions of successful legal transfers? How is globalisation changing these conditions? Such problems are also discussed with reference to substantive and specific case studies. When and why did Japanese rules of product liability come into line with those of the EU and the USA? How and why did judicial review come late to the legal systems of Holland and Scandinavia? Why is the present wave of USA-influenced legal reforms in Latin Amercia apparently having more success than the previous round? How does competition between the legal and accountancy professions affect patterns of bankruptcy? The chapters in this volume, which include a comprehensive theoretical introduction, offer a range of valuable insights even if they also show that the

This volume cross-examines mainstream approaches to studying legal culture (e.g. those of Friedman and Blankenburg). It includes debates over the concept of legal culture and a variety of case studies of different legal cultures.

This textbook aims to illuminate the context of law in Europe by exploring its various cultures. Two interpretations of legal culture are considered. Firstly, as it is used in legal philosophy and legal theory - to characterize the professional administration of the law. Secondly, the legal-sociological understanding of legal culture as the sum of conditions that impinge upon the law's development and application, whether this be the procedural methods employed by institutions, the interests and professional qualities of the legal actors, or the general legal consciousness of the public. Both interpretations of legal culture lead to an understanding of law that suggests a certain scepticism regarding the expectation that Western Europe's successfully tried and tested legal models can be quickly applied to other societies as well. Like all cultural assets, law is subject to processes of adaptation and exchange - but its exportability is limited.

For law students and lawyers to successfully understand and practice law in the U.S., recognition of the wider context and culture which informs the law is essential. Simply learning the legal rules and procedures in isolation is not enough without an appreciation of the culture that produced them. This book provides the reader with an understandable introduction to the ways in which U.S. law reflects its culture and each chapter begins with questions to guide the reader, and concludes with questions for review, challenge and further understanding. Kirk W. Junker explores cultural differences, employing history, social theory, philosophy, and language as "reference frames," which are then applied to the rules and procedures of the U.S. legal system in the book’s final chapter. Through these cultural reference frames readers are provided with a set of interpretive tools to inform their understanding of the substance and institutions of the law. With a deeper understanding of this cultural context, international students will be empowered to more quickly adapt to their studies; more comprehensively understand the role of the attorney in the U.S. system; draw comparisons with their own domestic legal systems, and ultimately become more successful in their legal careers both in the U.S. and abroad.

This volume of essays examines how the legal systems of the chief countries of Latin America and Mediterranean Europe—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, France, Italy, and Spain—changed in the last quarter of the 20th century. Through essays that provide a wealth of data on the courts and the legal profession in these countries, the book attempts to relate changes in the operation of the legal systems to changes in the political and social history of the societies in which they are embedded. The details vary, in accordance with the particular history and structure of the countries, but there are also key commonalities that run through all of the stories: democratization, globalization, and changes in the legal order that seem to be worldwide; more power to courts; a growing legal profession; and the entry of women into what was once a masculine club.

These essays on comparative legal cultures look at topics such as the roots and alternatives of Western legal culture, common law and civil law, variations for cultures of law, comparative legal methods, legal cultures in co-existence and conflict, and degenaration of legal cultures.