The legal origins theory claims that the two main legal traditions or origins, civil law and common law, crucially shape lawmaking and dispute adjudication and have not been reformed after the initial exogenous transplantation by Europeans.[1] Therefore, they affect economic outcomes to date.[1] According to the evidence reported by the initial proponents of such a theory, countries that received civil law would display today less secure investor rights, stricter regulation, and more inefficient governments and courts than those that inherited common law.[1][2] These differences would reflect both a stronger historical emphasis of common law on private ordering and the higher adaptability of judge-made law.[3]
Legal origins theory became popular among economists in the late 20th century, at the same time that practitioners of comparative law were largely abandoning taxonomic classifications of legal systems.[4]
:6 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).