In my doctoral thesis, I am inquiring into methodical problems of legal transplants: With what problems may legislators be confronted when borrowing law from another jurisdiction? How can comparative law help legislators to avoid negative impacts?
The main argument of my dissertation project is that the studies on legal transplants needs a problem-oriented approach by using typologies. Therefore, the thesis attempts to identify and categorise problem areas in the implementation process of legal transplants and set the groundwork for a legal transplants typology based on those categories. In order to illustrate those problem areas, my thesis uses three legal transplants from the past: the reception of German property law by Post-Soviet Estonia; the reception of the Swiss Civil Code by Post-Ottoman Turkey; the imposition of a US-model constitution on post-war Japan by the Allies. As a next step I attempt to develop some suggestions and strategies that may help lawmakers to avoid the identified problems. Finally, the thesis deals with the question of how we can identify a standard to evaluate the success of legal transplants.
After the presentation of those concepts, I would like to critically discuss with you my approach in general with a close attention to my work on typologies. Finally, I hope to talk about potential methods that can help comparative lawyers to realise a problem-oriented legal transplants research.