“A happy union”? Malta’s legal hybridity

Abstract

Throughout history, all particular systems have absorbed foreign influences, and the end result would therefore seem to be that no individual system today derives purely from its own particular roots. In this Article, we lay out the broad outlines of the Maltese legal tradition. We first suggest approaching comparative research as the study of legal (and normative) mixtures and movements. This study of ‘hybridity and diffusion’ allows us to see the traditional taxonomies of comparative law in a new light. All legal traditions are hybrids created in large part by the diffusion of laws and related doctrinal models across time and space. Hybridity is, of course, especially obvious in the case of those jurisdictions identified as ‘mixed legal systems’. Malta’s legal tradition remains little known, but deserves greater attention. [Excerpt]