Transplantation of Legal Systems: An Early Report on the Reception of Western Laws in Ethiopia

The transplantation of large bodies of law from one society to another is an old exercise.1 It occurred during the Roman Era and there was a general dissemination of the Napoleonic Code in the 19th century. The durability of early transplants has varied but documented explanations for these variations have not come down to us. Recent transplants of this sort have seen an increase in an important dimension of the process. As nations have been drawn apart due to accelerated economic development on the part of some and the relative quiescence of others, there have been attempts to promote a narrowing of the distance by importing the formal societal norms from the more to the less developed. This has meant that transplants have been attempted between countries that were very different culturally as well as economically. History has placed the economic avant-garde primarily in the Western nations which are culturally quite distinct from the less developed continents, particularly Asia and Africa. The theory has been that transplants are least likely to succeed where the economic and cultural gaps between the exporting and importing nations are the greatest.2