Paper's abstract

Horatia Muir Watt, Introductory remarks about the prestige of the American model
We have only a scant knowledge about prestige as a factor of circulation of legal models. We just know that this recurrent phenomenon inside the occidental legal tradition - which underwent successively romanisation, gallicisation or germanisation of its law before yielding today to the attraction of American law - cannot usually be dissociated from the myth. In this respect, the contemporary prestige of American law, to which the Academy remains until now fairly impervious, seems to act through the imagery mind of students as well as through the needs of legal professionals. It is to them that the American model offers on the one hand a new way of thinking legal order as a law-tool, paradoxically open to questioning and, on the other hand, background solutions perceived as economically efficient and politically symbolic.

Key Words : prestige, model
t. 45, 2001 : p. 29-36

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