law being more mandatory runs parallel with the evolutionary idea of property law being less able to change when confronted with a changing environment. Comparative law also provides us with evidence on the evolutionary thesis. Legal transplants in the field of contract law are far greater than in the field of property law. This may partly be due to private international laws lex rei sitae(accordingly there is no need to incorporate foreign property rights into one's own legal system), but it is certainly also due to the high costs of transplanting from another system in the case of property law and the much lesser costs in the case of contract and tort law. In the latter, legal transplants have been vigorous; the relative uniformity that already exists in the field of European contract law is undoubtedly caused by these transplants. In particular English law was to a great extent influenced by the civil law of the 19 century, as continental European law is influenced in the late 20 century by the law of financial transactions on for example swaps, lease and franchising, coming from the common law world 5.4 The Race to the Bottom Argument and Evolutionary Theory Finally, I will investigate whether evolutionary theory gives us some insight into the famous problem of the " race to the bottom", particularly of interest in company law. Competition of legal systems, as opposed to a centralistic harmonisation, has for a consequence that companies are free to move from one state(or country) to another. In doing so, they will choose for the state(or country) with the lowest standards (like in the case of American company law the state of Delaware). The"home country control principle" subsequently guarantees that this low standard is exported to other states as well. What will evolve in the end, is a uniform law of the lowest standard. This race to the bottom may thus be said to arise when, "in a deregulated internal market, a state unilaterally lowers its social standards in an attempt to attract business from other states". 78 The present debate on the race to the bottom-argument is mostly normative: usually concerns are expressed about the lowering of standards through jurisdictional competition. The enactment of mandatory social legislation by the European Union even has as an explicit goal to avoid social dumping. This contribution addresses the problem from a somewhat different angle evolutionary theory may be able to show us to what extent a race to the bottom is inevitable in a changing economic environment As we saw in biology(section 4), the direction of adaptation of a species is toward simplicity in case of homogenisation of the environment and toward complexity when the environment still has many unfilled niches. If this were true for the evolution of private law as well, it would mean that homogenisation of the economic environment(that indeed originates See THE RECEPTIoN OF CONTINENTAL IDEAS IN THE COMMON LAW WORld 1820-1920(Matthias Reimann ed, 1993) C. Norbert Reich, Competition between Legal Orders: a New Paradigm of EC Lav?, 29 COMMON MKT L REV. 861(1992): Jody S. Kraus, Legal Design and the Evolution of Commercial Norms, 26 J. LEGAL STUD. 377(1997); Dreher, supra note 73, at 105 and Catherine Barnard, Social Dumping and the Race to the Bottom: some Lessons for the European Union from Delaware, 25 EUROPEAN LAW REVIEW 2000, 57-78 Barnard, supra note 77, at 57. This"jurisdictional competition"should be distinguished from the idea of free movement of legal rules(cf Smits, supra note 13, at 328). The former is concerned with choosing some legal system, the latter with choosing some legal rule Barnard, supra note 77, at 6613 law being more mandatory runs parallel with the evolutionary idea of property law being less able to change when confronted with a changing environment. Comparative law also provides us with evidence on the evolutionary thesis. Legal transplants in the field of contract law are far greater than in the field of property law. This may partly be due to private international law’s lex rei sitae (accordingly there is no need to incorporate foreign property rights into one’s own legal system), but it is certainly also due to the high costs of transplanting from another system in the case of property law and the much lesser costs in the case of contract and tort law. In the latter, legal transplants have been vigorous; the relative uniformity that already exists in the field of European contract law is undoubtedly caused by these transplants. In particular English law was to a great extent influenced by the civil law of the 19th century, 76 as continental European law is influenced in the late 20th century by the law of financial transactions on for example swaps, lease and franchising, coming from the common law world. 5.4 The Race to the Bottom Argument and Evolutionary Theory Finally, I will investigate whether evolutionary theory gives us some insight into the famous problem of the “race to the bottom”, particularly of interest in company law. Competition of legal systems,77 as opposed to a centralistic harmonisation, has for a consequence that companies are free to move from one state (or country) to another. In doing so, they will choose for the state (or country) with the lowest standards (like in the case of American company law the state of Delaware). The “home country control principle” subsequently guarantees that this low standard is exported to other states as well. What will evolve in the end, is a uniform law of the lowest standard. This race to the bottom may thus be said to arise when, “in a deregulated internal market, a state unilaterally lowers its social standards in an attempt to attract business from other states”.78 The present debate on the race to the bottom-argument is mostly normative: usually, concerns are expressed about the lowering of standards through jurisdictional competition. The enactment of mandatory social legislation by the European Union even has as an explicit goal to avoid social dumping.79 This contribution addresses the problem from a somewhat different angle: evolutionary theory may be able to show us to what extent a race to the bottom is inevitable in a changing economic environment. As we saw in biology (section 4), the direction of adaptation of a species is toward simplicity in case of homogenisation of the environment and toward complexity when the environment still has many unfilled niches. If this were true for the evolution of private law as well, it would mean that homogenisation of the economic environment (that indeed originates 76 See THE RECEPTION OF CONTINENTAL IDEAS IN THE COMMON LAW WORLD 1820-1920 (Matthias Reimann ed., 1993). 77 Cf. Norbert Reich, Competition between Legal Orders: a New Paradigm of EC Law?, 29 COMMON MKT. L. REV. 861 (1992); Jody S. Kraus, Legal Design and the Evolution of Commercial Norms, 26 J. LEGAL STUD. 377 (1997); Dreher, supra note 73, at 105 and Catherine Barnard, Social Dumping and the Race to the Bottom: some Lessons for the European Union from Delaware, 25 EUROPEAN LAW REVIEW 2000, 57-78 (2000). 78 Barnard, supra note 77, at 57. This “jurisdictional competition” should be distinguished from the idea of free movement of legal rules (cf. Smits, supra note 13, at 328). The former is concerned with choosing some legal system, the latter with choosing some legal rule. 79 Barnard, supra note 77, at 66