Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

The close of 2004 gave rise to a sharp controversy about French Law, namely its Civil Law. On the one hand, the French were celebrating the bicentennial of the Civil Code, placing emphasis on its flexibility and its adaptability to new economic models.2 On the other hand, a report of the World Bank concluded that the French Legal System was deterring business, 3 the enforcement of contracts being quite difficult to manage in French Law. The French disputed the accuracy of the methods and data used. in this report, correctly assuming there were many material errors. They argued that the political purpose of this report was to promote Common Law systems versus Civil Law systems at a moment when the evaluation of legal systems had become a customary method chosen by developing countries seeking to reform their own legal systems. Therefore, the dissemination of an accurate perception of foreign legal systems has gained crucial importance. In order to "benchmark" legal systems, one has to understand them properly. Translations of foreign legal texts, provided they are reliable, are therefore a very useful tool for comparison and choice. The choice may well be that of a government seeking legislative models in foreign legal systems, or it may well be that of a lawyer drafting an international contract and wondering which choice of law clause he should recommend to his client.

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