Global Legal Interaction and Legal Cultures

Abstract . The legal discourse of a steadily growing European legal community and universal legal harmonization is misleading since it abstracts completely from the cultural dimension of law which consist of patterns of interpretation and behavioral routines with respect to law. The article makes use of abundant literature in administrative sciences, international management research and socio-psychological studies in Intercultural Communication in order to propose indicators for a comparison of legal cultures in the areas of European legal integration, international commercial transactions and international lawyering.     

法律文化与法律移植:中西古今之间

自传统社会,就出现了法律的跨文化和跨国家的传播和流动.在比较法学领域,研究者通常把这种法律的传播和流动称作法律移植.法律移植不仅涉及政治、经济、宗教和社会等外部因素,而且涉及法律文化.本文拟探讨法律文化与法律移植的一般含义,重新思考中西古今法律文化的异同及其与法律移植的关系.     

Legal Cultures in the European Union

The introductory part of the essay deals with the notion of legal culture and its categories. Later, the author sets forth the characteristics of the common law and the Roman- German legal cultures, including the legal families within them. He also touches upon the tendencies of the development of the German legal and political culture. With respect to the integration of the legal systems into the EU, the author argues as an advocate of convergence. Both basic legal cultures are being modified as, besides statutory law, judicial law becomes significant in the continental legal systems and statutory law complements case law in the common law systems. As to the integration of the Hungarian legal culture into the EU, the essay points to two principal considerations. On the one hand, when working on making our legal culture "euro-conform", we must not forget about maintaining our own legal culture. On the other hand, the Hungarian legal culture can contribute to the development of the legal system of the EU, e. g. with some of the regulations of our statute on the ethnic minorities. At the end, the author shows that the efficacy of the European law is heavily dependant upon the national legal systems.