LEGAL TRANSPLANTS IN INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT: SOME PROBLEMS OF METHOD Paul Edward Gellert All I could think of was the arrogance that had gone unno- ticed. It had been taken for granted not only that our system was the best and the most sensible one in the world, but that we had a right to impose it on anyone in our power. I now know, however-lest I appear to be unnecessarily hard on my fellow countrymen-with the benefit bestowed by years, that it isn't just my own culture but all cultures that act in these ways. Each culture has its own reasons and rationalizations for forcing its way on others. -Edward T. Hall' I. INTRODUCTION A legal transplant may be defined as any legal notion or rule which, after being developed in a source body of law, is then introduced into another, host body of law. A classic ex- ample is found in the Corpus Juris Civilis, the compendium of Roman Law which the Emperor Justinian commissioned almost fifteen centuries ago. Law encapsulated in the Corpus Juris has found a host in Continental European law over the last thousand years. This process has been called the reception of Roman law into modem European law. Copyright law governs how literary and artistic works may be exploited. The rise of copyright might have begun when pa- I Attorney, Los Angeles; Adjunct Professor, International Intellectual Prop- erty, University of Southern California Law Center. I thank Dr. Adolf Dietz of the Max Planck Institute, as well as Professors Marci A. Hamilton, William C. Jones, Mark Rose, Brad Sherman, and Alain Strowel, for their critical comments on prior drafts of this paper. 1. EDWARD T. HALL, WEST OF THE THIRTIES: A STORY OF DISCOVERIES AMONG THE NAVAJO AND Hopi 70 (1994). 2. See ALAN WATSON, LEGAL TRANSPLANTS: AN APPROACH To COMPARA- TIVE LAW 36-43, 79-101 passim (2d ed. 1993).