When "Stuff Happens" Isn't Enough: How An Evolutionary Theory of Doctrinal and Legal System Development Can Enrich Comparative Legal Studies
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Oliver R. Goodenough
Abstract
Comparative legal scholarship will benefit from better explanations of legal development. While the complications of legal systems are a challenge for cause and effect stories, evolutionary theory offers a powerful, yet relatively simple, set of explanatory principles that can be appropriately applied to both doctrinal topics and legal systems as a whole. The necessary starting point for an evolutionary analysis is to examine the three core components of evolution: descent, variation, and selection. Engaging these topics and developing good descriptions for each of them for the targeted system can be very helpful in providing good explanations to the “why” questions of comparative law analysis.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction: Symposium on Evolutionary Approaches to (Comparative) Law: Integrating Theoretical Perspectives
- Legal Evolution: Integrating Economic and Systemic Approaches
- Bio-Legal History, Dual Inheritance Theory and Naturalistic Comparative Law: On Content and Context Biases in Legal Evolution
- Reinvigorating Comparative Law through Behavioral Economics? A Cautiously Optimistic View
- Evolutionary Theories in Law and Economics and Their Use for Comparative Legal Theory
- The Emergence of a New Rule of Customary Law: An Experimental Contribution
- Is Law a Parasite? An Evolutionary Explanation of Differences among Legal Traditions
- When "Stuff Happens" Isn't Enough: How An Evolutionary Theory of Doctrinal and Legal System Development Can Enrich Comparative Legal Studies
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction: Symposium on Evolutionary Approaches to (Comparative) Law: Integrating Theoretical Perspectives
- Legal Evolution: Integrating Economic and Systemic Approaches
- Bio-Legal History, Dual Inheritance Theory and Naturalistic Comparative Law: On Content and Context Biases in Legal Evolution
- Reinvigorating Comparative Law through Behavioral Economics? A Cautiously Optimistic View
- Evolutionary Theories in Law and Economics and Their Use for Comparative Legal Theory
- The Emergence of a New Rule of Customary Law: An Experimental Contribution
- Is Law a Parasite? An Evolutionary Explanation of Differences among Legal Traditions
- When "Stuff Happens" Isn't Enough: How An Evolutionary Theory of Doctrinal and Legal System Development Can Enrich Comparative Legal Studies
