This thesis explores the making of Thailand’s Civil and Commercial Code in 1925 (‘Code of 1925’), especially the drafting method the draftsmen employed, and ascertains how the use of this method affected Thai lawyers’ understanding of rules and concepts of the Code. The Code of 1925 emerged from a period in which Thailand was under threat from colonisation by Western powers. As a result of a number of unbalanced commercial treaties between the Thai and foreign governments, the jurisdictional sovereignty of the country had been eroded by consular jurisdiction and the principle of extraterritoriality. These ‘unfair treaties’ forced the Thai government to establish a modern legal system as part of its attempts to recover full judicial autonomy. The work of codification of civil and commercial law, which began in 1908 under the direction of French draftsmen, produced the desired result in 1925 only after Phraya Manavarajasevi (Plod na Songkhla) became involved. Plod was instrumental in replacing the French Code civil with the BGB of 1900 as the principal model and introducing the Japanese Civil Code of 1898 (‘Minpō’) and the ‘copying method’ which he referred to as the ‘Japanese method’ to the new Thai-dominated drafting committee. The Japanese Code and the ‘Japanese method’ were chosen owing to Plod’s belief that the Japanese had established their civil code by copying the BGB. This thesis shows that Alan Watson’s theory of legal transplants is well suited for explaining this type of legal development: the draftsmen copied the wording of English translations of provisions of the BGB and the Minpō without much concern about their conceptual foundations. They finished their task within seven months. But Watson’s contention that successful legal borrowing does not require ‘a systematic knowledge of the law’ must be approached with great caution. Plod was misled by a secondary source he consulted into believing that the Minpō was practically a copy of the BGB. In reality, the Japanese Code was influenced by a variety of foreign laws, including German and French law. The drafting committee’s lack of knowledge about the rules and concepts they borrowed and the method they adopted led to difficulties in interpreting the rules and concepts in question. This is illustrated in this thesis by a case study of the legal rules in the Code of 1925 on specific performance. Most of the Thai provisions concerning non-performance and remedies for non-performance were copied from the BGB, but two important rules concerning the rights to performance and damages (Articles 213 and 215) came from the Minpō. These provisions were mainly influenced by French law, but Plod and most likely other Thai draftsmen erroneously believed that they were of German origin. The text of these two articles clearly put specific performance and damages as remedies for non-performance on equal footing. The consequence of this is that Thai academics who maintain that specific performance is the primary remedy for nonperformance have struggled to justify this point of view. Whenever they expound on the principle of the primacy of specific performance in Thai law, Thai writers produce contradictory statements because the wording of Articles 213 and 215 forces them to accept that the creditor in case of non-performance has the right to choose between specific performance and damages. This thesis shows that legal borrowing without a proper use of comparative law and legal history and a systematic knowledge of the law borrowed can lead to undesirable results. Thai lawyers must employ comparative and historical methods when discovering the true character of the Thai rules and concepts. With the help of these methods, they may find common ground in legal concepts and resolve some theoretical problems.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the Russian culture and citizens' perceived fairness of the new Criminal Procedural Code of Russia of 2001 (CPC of 2001). The CPC of 2001 is a key policy in the Russian criminal law reform with the purpose of implementing adversarial procedure elements in Russia. The existing literature has documented the lack of public support along with observed violations of the CPC's major provisions which as made this an important area for study. It is theorized that the apparent contradiction between the underlying values of the Russian culture, and CPC's adversarial procedure that reflects anti-cultural values, are responsible for the lack of substantial public support and acceptance of the CPC of 2001. The theory of motivational values developed by Schwartz (1990) is used as a framework to examine the Russian culture. Damaska's (1986) theory of procedural models is used to examine the adversarial elements of the new CPC of 2001. The group value theory of fairness is employed to examine the relationships between Russian cultural values and the public opinion about the criminal procedural law (Lind & Tyler, 1988). The study used a multi-stage stratified random sample of 1,588 Russian residents to explore the relationship between the culture and the perceived fairness of the CPC of 2001. The sample is representative of the Russian Federation population. The data is analyzed through four structural-equation models, a set of non-parametric tests, and descriptive statistical analysis. The findings of this thesis confirmed that cultural values in Russia are predominantly collective. On average, 69% of Russian respondents reported that collective values play a very important role in their life. The type of prevailing values was dependent on the demographic characteristics of the sample: age, gender, place of residence, level of education, marital status, and household income. It was found that the majority of Russian citizens believe that the inquisitional criminal procedure is an ideal of fair law. On average, 72% supported the inquisitorial procedural model in Russia. Unlike the adversarial procedure, the inquisitorial procedural model is not based on competition between the equal parties of prosecution and defense. Instead, it is viewed as a cooperative process between the judge, prosecutor and defense in their inquiry into the circumstances of the case. The adversarial procedural model was not supported by most citizens. Only 33.5% reported that the adversarial procedural model can be considered fair. The study corroborated that the new CPC was not fully supported by the majority of respondents. An average of 27.5% of respondents in Russia reported that the CPC of 2001 is a fair law, in comparison to 72.5% who think that the CPC of 2001 is unfair. The findings validated that the CPC of 2001's inclusion of adversarial procedural elements contradict key values of the contemporary Russian culture. It is concluded that the CPC of 2001 should be reformed to facilitate citizen acceptance. Greater acceptance will support the attempt to advance the democratization of the criminal process through increased civil rights while simultaneously enhancing positive social control. It is proposed that the planned policy reforms that contain additional elements of the adversarial criminal procedure be introduced in a phased manner. It is also recommended that the adversarial procedure values should be publicized through public awareness educational programs. The data analysis also suggests that confounding factors such as citizen distrust of the criminal justice institutions can contribute to problems associated with acceptance of the criminal law reform. The research model developed for this study can be used to examine policies related to criminal law reform in other former Soviet Union countries.

Through Judith Butler’s concept of ‘cultural translation’, this dissertation seeks to provide a less imperialistic law-making mechanism as it relates to the lesbian, gay and bisexual rights concept (hereinafter ‘the LGB rights concept’) in Turkey, which currently relies heavily on legal transplantation. In search of a new law-making method, this thesis first deconstructs ‘legal transplantation’ as that which creates various asymmetrical relations that amount to consolidating Western imperialism. Critical legal scholars have shown great interest in revealing the imperialistic consequences of the law-maker West and the law-taker non-West. This thesis aims to add another dimension to these discussions by placing ‘imitation’, as advanced by Judith Butler, at the heart of its analyses. It scrutinises legal transplantation through the various imitations/repetitions it embodies and explores the role of imitation in law-making as law-taking. It does so by evaluating legal change by means of legal transplantation through the example of the Turkish experience with the LGB rights concept, and uses Judith Butler’s understanding of imitation/repetition, as advanced in her gender performativity concept, to achieve this evaluation This thesis attempts to expand our understanding of law-making as law-taking by unveiling their performative force, which humanises the subject in a way that is similar to the processes of gendering it. In doing so, this thesis aims to transfer the analyses that postulate the gendered body as performative to the rubric of human rights law, and argues that humanisation of the body through granting rights is performative as well. Though the occasion arises for subversion from these various imitations, it introduces a new law-making method, cultural translation, transforming the realm of limited possibilities for human rights into the realm of the possible.

Cette recherche est axée sur deux sujets principaux. Premièrement, dans l’objectif de réforme du droit et d’amélioration des systèmes juridiques, nous nous intéresserons à l’étude des formes d’application du droit comparé. La première partie portera sur la fonction réformatrice du droit comparé, notamment au travers d’analyse de la méthodologie et des évolutions contemporaines de la science du droit comparé. De plus, le concept de réforme et les conditions préliminaires nécessaires à l’opération de réforme seront étudiés ici et nous permettrons de démontrer comment cette opération impose davantage de complexité que la seule révision législative via la transplantation des règles et des institutions étrangères. Ces difficultés rendent nécessaire une mobilisation de différentes méthodes fonctionnelle et culturelle pour augmenter la chance de prise de la greffe juridique du droit des pays plus développés vers les pays en voie de développement. Une étude interdisciplinaire du contexte des ordres juridiques variés pourrait nous aider à prendre en compte les diverses circonstances de chaque nation. Dans une seconde partie, nous tenterons d’appliquer ou de conceptualiser ce modèle concernant la réforme sur un cas concret : le droit civil iranien. Ce droit est en effet un bon exemple de métissage des règles traditionnelles du droit musulman (Charia ou plus précisément feqh) chiite avec la tradition civiliste romano-germanique. Nous tenterons de présenter une perspective historique de la modernisation du droit iranien et du contexte dans lequel ce droit a évolué et s’est transformé. Tout au long du siècle suivant la Révolution constitutionnelle (Mashrouteh) et visant la modernisation de la structure politique et juridique, l’Iran a connu différentes époques, parfois favorisants les valeurs traditionnelles et d’autres fois, donnant avantage aux valeurs modernes. Un mouvement de modernisation inspiré des pays européens est amorcé, mais le manque d’institutionnalisation de la modernité en Iran et la Révolution islamique ont fait reculer la majorité des fruits du Mashrouteh vers une idéologie traditionnelle-islamique. La méthode comparative nous aide donc à concrétiser la phase de diagnostic juridique et social en Iran, notamment à la lumière de la comparaison avec les systèmes juridiques québécois et français. Finalement, nous essaierons de présenter certaines solutions par le biais de la comparaison internormative (avec d’autres interprétations du feqh) et législative (avec l’observation d’autres droits positifs étrangers) pour bâtir un nouvel ordre juridique iranien en harmonie avec les évolutions contemporaines en Iran. / This research focuses on two main topics. First, with the aim of reforming the law and improving legal systems, we will study various forms of applying the science of comparative law. At the first part, we will focus on the reforming function of comparative law through an analysis of the methodology and contemporary developments in this discipline. Moreover, the concept of reform and the preliminary conditions necessary for the reform operation will be studied, and we will demonstrate how this operation imposes more complexity than merely legislative revision through the transplantation of foreign rules and institutions. These difficulties make it necessary to mobilize different functional and cultural methods to increase the chance of taking legal transplant from the more developed countries to the developing countries. An interdisciplinary study of the context of various legal orders could help us to take into account the varying circumstances of each nation. In a second part, we will try to apply or conceptualize this model concerning the reform on a concrete case: the Iranian civil law. This law is a good example of the interbreeding of the traditional rules of Shiite Muslim law (Sharia or more precisely feqh) with the RomanoGermanic civil law tradition. We will present a historical perspective of the modernization of Iranian law and the context in which it has evolved and transformed. Throughout the century following the Constitutional Revolution (Mashrouteh) and aimed at modernizing the political and legal structure, Iran went through different eras, sometimes favoring traditional values and other times giving advantage to modern values. A movement of modernization inspired by European countries was initiated, but the lack of institutionalization of modernity in Iran and the Islamic Revolution have pushed the majority of the fruits of the Mashrouteh towards a traditional-Islamic ideology. The comparative method therefore helps us to concretize the phase of legal and social diagnosis in Iran, particularly in the light of the comparison with the Quebec and French legal systems. Finally, we will try to present some solutions through the internormative (with other interpretations of the feqh) and legislative (with the observation of other positive foreign laws) comparisons to build a new Iranian legal order in harmony with the contemporary evolutions in Iran

During the legislative works on a new Civil Code for the Czech Republic, it has been proposed that the concept of trust be introduced into Czech law, largely by transplanting the concept of fiducie contained in the Civil Code of Québec. The thesis, after introducing the principal concepts of trust as known around the world today, whether in common law jurisdictions, civil law jurisdictions or mixed jurisdictions, describes the principal commercial uses of trust in trust jurisdictions and analyses the possibilities of current Czech law to replicate the trust function not using the trust. The thesis argues that the classical civilist objections to the possibility to implant true trust into civil law jurisdictions are largely unfounded in respect of the Czech legal system. The thesis further performs a comparative assessment of the Czech Civil Code proposal. It is argued that the legal construct at hand in the proposal is actually not trust, but a mere trust-like arrangement, as it lacks one of the trust's most salient features -- transfer of the trust property by the settlor to the trustee. Apart from that, the thesis analyses specific provisions of the proposal and subjects them critique. Based on this analysis, it introduces a number of proposals for the enhancement of the proposed provisions.

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À la différence d'autres phénomènes juridiques, le déplacement du droit d'un lieu à l'autre s'inscrit dans une analyse beaucoup plus ample que celle de droit comparé. Les États sont mis en concurrence dans de nombreux domaines : politiques économiques et fiscales, protection sociale, systèmes éducatifs, innovation, etc. Les systèmes juridiques se retrouvent également en compétition. Avec la mondialisation les échanges entre les systèmes juridiques se sont multipliés, ouvrant la voie à un recours plus fréquent à la démarche comparative. Par conséquent, la circulation du droit est un sujet qui a intéressé à la pensée juridique depuis toujours, mais qui ne commence à être traité que récemment. Pour le comprendre il convient de se rapporter à un cas spécifique, qui étant donné son caractère paradigmatique est celui de la réception du droit, de la doctrine et du régime constitutionnel français pendant les années trente en Colombie. Son examen servira comme support empirique d'un modèle explicatif du phénomène de la diffusion, d'un État à un autre, d'un droit formalisé et systématisé. / Unlike other legal phenomena, law's moving one place to another is part of a much broader analysis than that of comparative law. States are in competition in many areas: economic and fiscal policies, social protection, education systems, innovation, etc. Legal systems are also in competition. With globalization, exchanges between legal systems have proliferated, opening the way to more frequent use of comparative approach. Therefore, the circulation of law is a subject that always interested to legal thought, but it begins to be treated recently. To understand it should relate to a specific case, which given its paradigmatic character is that of reception of the law, the doctrine and the constitutional French regime during the thirties in Colombia. This review will serve as empirical support for a model explaining the phenomenon of diffusion from one state to another, of a formalized and systematized law.