'LEGAL TRANSPLANT' (Alan Watson, 1974) refers to:

Question

Accepted Answer

A.

1. ALAN WATSON's 'Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law' (1974) is a foundational work in comparative law.
2. CENTRAL THESIS: Legal change occurs primarily through BORROWING — legal rules, doctrines, institutions are TRANSPLANTED from one legal system to another.
3. Watson argued: even rules that seem deeply embedded in a culture often have foreign origins.
4. EXAMPLES:
5. (i) Roman law spread throughout Europe via medieval reception;
6. (ii) Napoleonic Code influenced many civil law systems;
7. (iii) English common law transplanted to India, Australia, Canada, USA, Africa;
8. (iv) German BGB 1900 influenced Japan, Greece, Korea;
9. (v) International humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions) implemented domestically across many systems.
10. CRITIQUES: Pierre Legrand argues legal transplants are impossible without cultural transplant; transplant changes meaning in new context.
11. INDIA: hybrid system — English common law plus indigenous laws, statutes drawing on global models.
12. Hence option B is correct.
_Source: Legal Research Methodology + Jurisprudence — Alan Watson, 'Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law' (1974)_