ABSTRACT
This Article examines the puzzle of why over twenty common law jurisdictions have adopted the civil law private foundation, a phenomenon that traditional legal transplant theory cannot fully explain. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘legal grafting’ to describe this process: a practitioner-driven, selective importation of foreign legal features that are then attached to domestic legal structures (structural attachment) and modified to meet local market needs (functional adaptation). Drawing on interviews with legislative drafters and a competitive analysis of foundation statutes across jurisdictions, we demonstrate how legal grafting serves as a strategic tool for legal and commercial innovation. The concept of legal grafting refines recursivity theory, transnational legal orders and transplant theory by offering a more granular, agency-focused explanation for how legal hybrids are engineered from the bottom-up and how small jurisdictions compete and innovate with speed in the global market.
Hen, May and Morriss, Andrew P, Grafting Civil Law Private Foundations onto the Common Law (October 7, 2025).
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