An ancestry of bridges: the persistence of legal transplants in Croatia and Poland

Legal transplants are some of the many traits that Central and Eastern European legal systems share; in the case of Croatia and Poland, however, they come to the forefront of the legal identity of the two countries. As such, this chapter proposes comparing the experiences of the two countries with respect to implementation, adaptation, and persistence of legal transplants. The first section provides a summarised background with a historical perspective on Croatian and Polish legal transplants. Both countries share the Austrian, as well as later German, Soviet and ultimately EU legal influences; however, in the Polish case, the number of other foreign impacts is greater, with an especially strong French legacy. The theoretical inquiry is then contrasted with case studies, which cover the Croatian land registry and the Polish law on allotments as particular examples of legal transplants that have persisted through a variety of political and social transitions. The paper concludes by placing the experiences of Croatia and Poland in a broader regional and European perspective.