UDTR — Radar mondial des droits de la Nature

Dead Language, Living Law: Latin Legal Maxims as Perfect Memes

Identification

Clé publique

radar:r-3b8515ae2456f48d02c4cbe0629db9b4

Auteurs

LERER, Ignacio Adrian

Année déclarée

2026

Langue déclarée

en

Type source

Preprint

Première détection

2026-11-13T08:38:27.145361+00:00

Dernière observation des métadonnées

2026-11-13T08:38:27.145361+00:00

Dernière vérification HTTP

Non effectuée

Institutions déclarées par la source

Independent Researcher

Résumé documentaire — langue originale

Latin legal maxims represent evolution's solution to a fundamental problem: how to transmit complex legal concepts across generations without degradation. This paper demonstrates that Latin maxims aren't antiquated traditions but optimally evolved memes that achieve extraordinary transmission fidelity through five mechanisms: linguistic immutability (dead languages cannot mutate), cognitive economy (extreme conceptual compression averaging 3.18 words), costly signaling (professional group membership), network effects (universal recognition across jurisdictions), and strategic ambiguity (enabling contextual adaptation while maintaining core meaning). Comprehensive analysis of 2,137 Latin maxims across 2,000 years of legal history, conducted using the Universal Analysis Framework, reveals Darwinian selection at work with mathematical precision. Successful maxims like "habeas corpus," "res judicata" (25,000 annual citations globally), and "pacta sunt servanda" exhibit specific memetic characteristics—brevity (92% survival rate for 2-3 word maxims), untranslatability (95% survival for conceptually unique terms), and procedural utility (88% survival versus 65% for substantive maxims). The paper identifies "antagonistic pairs" of maxims that create evolutionary arms races (pacta sunt servanda/rebus sic stantibus showing 4.3:1 dominance ratio), maintaining legal flexibility through perpetual tension. Digital legal systems initially rejected Latin maxims as obsolete, yet blockchain governance and smart contracts increasingly adopt Latin terminology (75% frequency in DeFi protocols), with verified implementations on Ethereum Mainnet. The persistence of identical maxims across divergent legal traditions demonstrates convergent memetic evolution, with 67% overlap between historically unconnected jurisdictions. Latin legal language thus represents neither tradition nor pretension but evolutionary technology for high-fidelity legal transmission—the DNA of legal thought. This paper's novel contribution demonstrates that ancient legal memes actively evolve within digital ecosystems (blockchain, AI), revealing law's organic nature as an information system subject to Darwinian selection.

Identifiants

DOI

10.5281/zenodo.18556002

PMID

5486006

Repères documentaires

Famille documentaire

unknown

Types déclarés par les sources

Preprint

Éditeurs

Zenodo

Les mentions d’entités ne constituent pas une preuve de reconnaissance juridique. La juridiction étudiée est distincte du pays d’affiliation des auteurs.

Sources

DataCite · Document 1

• Document · https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.18556002

Statut documentaire

Pertinence à examiner

Bibliothèque

Cette identité n’est pas encore intégrée à la Bibliothèque juridique.