Cultural Replication Theory and Law

Oliver Goodenough
Additional contact information
Oliver Goodenough: Vermont Law School

No 1-1-1006, Gruter Institute Working Papers on Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Biology from Berkeley Electronic Press

Abstract: Does law itself evolve? It has been widely suggested that culturally transmitted behavioral information exhibits a Darwinian evolutionary dynamic. The argument is straightforward. Darwinian evolution has three basic elements: (i) replicative descent with (ii) variation, subject to (iii) a form of selection. Bundles of cultural information as diverse as language, religious practices, and how to bake bread pass with imperfect fidelity from generation to generation. Some of the variants created by these imperfections are passed, non-randomly, to the next generation with greater frequency.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-law and nep-sea
Note: oai:bepress:giwp-1006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=giwp (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bep:grleeb:1-1-1006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Gruter Institute Working Papers on Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Biology from Berkeley Electronic Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().