ABSTRACT
In the chapter, ‘What is the role of norms and values in the reception of law?’, Richard De Mulder and Helen Gubby reflect upon changes in law over time and the importation of legal principles from one legal system into another. Using the REMP (Resourceful, Evaluating, Maximising Person) model of man, developed in the economic sciences, they argue that whether the change or imported law will succeed depends upon whether it fits in with the social and economic interests of people in that society at that particular moment in time. Norms and values are not the overriding factors, as law is – these days – only legitimated if it is socially and economically useful. Examples used are the change in English criminal law on rape, which after 1991 no longer excluded a husband from the charge of rape; and the importation from Europe of the first-to-file system (rather than the first-to-invent system) into American patent law after 2011.
