The distribution of legal traditions around the world : A contribution to the legal-origins theory
Date
08/2014Keywords
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Abstract
The distribution of the common law was conditioned by a colonial strategy sensitive to the colonies’ level of endowments, exhibiting a more effective implantation of the legal system in initially sparsely populated territories with a temperate climate. This translates into a negative relationship of precolonial population density and settler mortality with legal outcomes for common-law countries. By contrast, the implantation of the French civil law was not systematically influenced by initial conditions, which is reflected in the lack of such a relationship for this legal family. The common law does not generally lead to legal outcomes superior to those provided by the French civil law when precolonial population density and/or settler mortality are high. The form of colonial rule in British colonies is found to mediate between precolonial endowments and postcolonial legal outcomes.
Citation
Oto-Peralías , D & Romero-Ávila , D 2014 , ' The distribution of legal traditions around the world : A contribution to the legal-origins theory ' , Journal of Law and Economics , vol. 57 , no. 3 , pp. 561-628 . https://doi.org/10.1086/676556
Publication
Journal of Law and Economics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0022-2186Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2014, The University of Chicago. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676556
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