TEN POSSIBLE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION “WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN SOMEONE SAYS ‘THE WESTERN LEGAL TRADITION’”

Click on ‘Answer’ below the numbered list of answers to see an answer. In class the prof. will click on the answer that corresponds to the answers that you give. For review, you might just want to click on all the answers.

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The bottom line is that all these suggestions are problematic. Either they are not uniquely western, or it’s not clear how deeply embedded they are in the tradition. We are going to suggest tomorrow that there is something else that is distinctly western in the legal tradition, something structural. We can use Justinian’s Institutes and the 19th century Continental codifications to illustrate it, but we will argue that it is present in both the Anglo-American and the Continental traditions, despite the fact that, by and large, the Anglo-Americans have not codified private law. We’ll come back to the divisions in the Institutes in our section meeting next week.