Kiwumulo George has posted Legal Transplants and Cultural Embeddedness: Rex v Amkeyo, Mifumi v Uganda, and Pierre Legrand’s Impossibility Thesis on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The notion of legal transplants refers to the migration of legal rules, institutions, or doctrines across jurisdictions. This topic has long been debated in comparative law. Alan Watson views legal transplants as efficient and socially easy borrowings. He argues they advance legal development regardless of cultural context.[1] In contrast, Pierre Legrand’s “impossibility thesis” claims true legal transplants are unfeasible. He argues that local meanings, historical norms, and interpretive communities shape law.
Transplanting only textual rules may create hollow forms lacking real meaning. In his 1997 essay, ‘The Impossibility of ‘Legal Transplants’, Legrand argues that while a palm tree moved from North Africa to England may physically survive, it will not thrive or bear fruit, and its significance will shift. Similarly, a legal rule placed in a new cultural context loses its original meaning and function, ceasing to be the same rule.[2]
This article explores Legrand’s critique through two significant East African family law cases: the colonial decision in Rex v Amkeyo (1917) from Kenya and the post-independence ruling in Mifumi (U) Ltd & 12 Others v Attorney General & Another [2015] UGSC 13 from Uganda. Both examples highlight tensions between imported legal norms and indigenous customary practices, demonstrating that legal transplants entail both constraints and opportunities for transformation.
On this basis, I argue for a nuanced perspective that acknowledges the deeply embedded cultural nature of legal norms and the need for careful interpretative adaptation in processes of legal reform. Methodologically, this work adopts a primarily doctrinal approach, complemented by socio-legal analysis, to examine the interaction between legal transplants and cultural contexts. Grounding the discussion in case studies and comparative studies further illustrates how legal meanings evolve as they are applied across different cultural settings.