Survival of the Third Legal Tradition?

Abstract

John Henry Merryman in his 1969 book claimed that there are, globally, three highly influential legal traditions in the world: civil law, common law, and socialist law. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, most comparative lawyers have abandoned the idea of the "socialist law" as the separate legal tradition. This text argues that, two decades after the "transition", the tradition in post-Socialist countries still has features that are distinctive from both civil and common law, and may therefore be taken as a separate, "third" legal tradition.

Keywords: Comparative Civil Procedure, Comparative Law, Socialist Law, Common Law, civil law