ABSTRACT
Sociologists can gain much from comparatists’ often first-hand descriptions of efforts at legal transfers and reflections on the obstacles encountered. Faced with strategic or tactical questions in transferring law, comparatists need to consult the existing social science literature so as to learn the lessons of past efforts at social change through law. Pierre Legrand severely criticizes the work of those of his comparatist colleagues who seek to demonstrate or produce legal convergence, to reveal an underlying ‘common core’ of principles and so forth. Other comparatists, such as William Ewald, follow Alan Watson’s lead in arguing that the frequency of legal transplants demonstrates the fallacy of attempting to produce a sociology of law. In transnational legal transfers, however, it is typical for law to be asked to jump-start the wider process of social change and leap-frog over long-standing social and cultural obstacles. Legal transfers are frequently – perhaps predominantly geared to fitting an imagined future.
