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Legal Transplants

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

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A legal transplant is a legal norm or legal institution (or, indeed, a group of institutions, entire normative act, etc.) that has been transferred to one legal system from another. The system from which the transplant originates is often referred to as the “donor system” or “model system,” while the receiving system is sometimes named “donee” or “borrowing system.” Transplantation includes anything from a norm being copied ad verbum, to extensive modifications being performed by the receiving system, while still keeping some core semblance of the original idea. The term, while older, has been popularized by Alan Watson’s theory of legal transplants, which underlines the significance that non-legal factors, including pure chance, often play in the process of transplantation. Many approximate synonyms for the process of transplantation exist (e.g., one can also talk of the reception or borrowing of foreign law), but few provide suitable nouns for the law being transferred, which could...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, Belgrade, Serbia

    Nina Kršljanin

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  1. Nina Kršljanin
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Correspondence to Nina Kršljanin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for International and Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Department of Legal Theory, International and European Law, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Theory, Sociology and Philosophy of Law, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Law, Belgrade, Serbia

    Miodrag Jovanovic LLM

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Kršljanin, N. (2023). Legal Transplants. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1120-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1120-1

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