LAW AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY From “ Evolutionary Theory and Law ” to a “ Legal

Evolutionary theories have always been treated by legal scholars as a sort of cousin to the legal theoretical family, both in Europe and the United States. They are nice theories, they tell interesting stories, you sometimes listen to what they have to say and when among friends, you may even quote them. However, in the modern mononuclear family, when it is time to tackle important issues and reach important decisions, or simply to celebrate some success stories, these cousins are often left outside the door, being simply “relatives” and not part of the legal family in the proper sense. A former evolutionary scholar strikingly stated in a manner that can be seen as representative of the general skepticism towards the evolutionary approach of a large segment of the legal family, “Legal scholarship should not be so timid as to depend on others for its theoretical models. We might take our inspiration where we find it, but we should build our theories within our own discipline, constrained only by the data that defines it and the criteria of quality appropriate to it.”1 The main objective of this article is to take the first step towards