Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

The Culture Of Legal Change: A Case Study Of Tobacco Control In Twenty-First Century Japan, Eric Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the interaction of international norms and local culture is a central factor in the creation and transformation of legal rules. Like Alan Watson's influential theory of legal transplants, it emphasizes that legal change is frequently a consequence of learning from other jurisdictions. And like those who have argued that rational, self-interested lawmakers responding to incentives such as reelection are the engine of legal change, this Article treats incentives as critical motivators of human behavior. But in place of the cutting-and-pasting of black-letter legal doctrine it highlights the cross-border flow of social norms, and rather than material …