Codes, Cultures, Chaos, and Champions: Common Features of Legal Codification Experiences in China, Europe, and North America

What are the key conditions and factors that contribute to a successful effort within a political unit to create a new legal code? This article builds of the existing "comparative codification" literature by examining that question in the context of three very different legal traditions: dynastic Chinese law, European civil law, and North American common law. Drawing on nine important codification experiences-four from China, two from Europe and three from North American-the author posits that three conditions must exist in a legal system for codification to occur: (i) that written law is generally regarded favorably as a means of ordering society; (ii) that the top political authority in the society is powerful enough to impose a code; and (iii) that such top political authority is eager to champion the cause of codification. Assuming these three necessary conditions are present, several key contributing factors-for example, cultural change and legal chaos-further augur in favor of codification. The author identifies five such factors and illustrates their importance in each of the nine codification experiences. The article concludes with some observations about (i) the value of including traditional Chinese law in comparative codification studies and (ii) the interplay between the concentration of political power (lacking, for example, in the international legal system) and the likelihood of legal codification

Civilization and Law: A Dark Optimism Based on the Precedent of Unprecedented Crises

This is the published version

The Asian Financial Crisis in Retrospect - Observations on Legal and Institutional Lessons Learned After a Dozen Years

In this contribution to the Review symposium on the Asian Financial Crisis, Professor Head examines how, in retrospect, we should view that tumultuous set of developments and the lessons they offered. After tracing the causes and triggers that set the crisis in motion in 1997, and identifying what paths toward recovery the three countries hardest-hit - Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea - took over the years that followed, Head focuses on certain international legal and institutional aspects of the crisis. He gives particular attention to the International Monetary Fund ( IMF ), first by summarizing the cacophony of criticisms directed at the IMF over its involvement in the Asian Financial Crisis and then by examining numerous ways in which the IMF has responded (or failed to respond) to those criticisms. Head closes with some observations about what lessons were offered and which lessons were learned as a result of the Asian Financial Crisis - and also with a cautionary note about the difficulties inherent in any international regime designed to respond to the unexpected