Legal Cultures of Latin America and the United States: Conflict or Merger

I am uncertain about how LatCrits think about the legal cultures of Latin America and the United States, and what I might possibly add to this collection of America\u27s preeminent group of LatCrits. Perhaps what might be useful is to draw upon my thirty-five years of teaching law to note some examples where the two cultures have come in conflict or have merged. One might wish to know who won, or better, what survived, when they came in conflict or merged. An example of the former is when new states of this union in the 1800s were presented with an opportunity to choose the legal system for the state---civil or common law. An example of the latter is the more recent adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),\u27 when choices had to be made about legal processes. Let me begin with the former