Laing, Bart Du --- "Gene-Culture Co-Evolutionary Theory and the Evolution of Legal Behavior and Institutions" [2011] ELECD 247; in Zumbansen, Peer; Calliess, Gralf-Peter (eds), "Law, Economics and Evolutionary Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Law, Economics and Evolutionary Theory

Editor(s): Zumbansen, Peer; Calliess, Gralf-Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848448230

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Gene-Culture Co-Evolutionary Theory and the Evolution of Legal Behavior and Institutions

Author(s): Laing, Bart Du

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

11. Gene-culture co-evolutionary theory
and the evolution of legal behavior and
institutions
Bart Du Laing*

1. INTRODUCTION

Some of the chapters in this edited volume are likely to have at least two things in
common. First, they aim to contribute to a research project on `legal certainty for glo-
balized exchange processes' and to the latter's attempts to explain the observed trans-
formation `towards the transnationalization of commercial law, which is understood as
a combination of the internationalization and privatization of the responsibility of the
state for the production of the normative good of legal certainty for global commerce'.
Secondly, they aim to fulfill this task by making use of `evolutionary theory' or, as it was
again expressed in the original conference announcement giving rise to earlier drafts of
this chapter, by dealing with `a theoretical perspective that gives some substance to the
meaning of the term "evolution" with regard to law, social organization, and the state'.
Since, as I will try to explain shortly, my own particular take on this ­ it would appear ­
relatively small set of commonalities involves more specifically the use of contemporary
evolutionary approaches to human behavior, I must admit to having been surprised that
no one else seemed to have much use for these approaches in their respective takes on the
problems that united us in the conference from which this chapter stems. After all, what
better use to make of a theory originating from biology than to elucidate the biological
underpinnings ...