common and civil law countries. Compared to other areas of commercial law, such as contract or commercial paper, corporate law has been largely code- like in the common law countries from a very early date. This raises the question whether the tendency toward more efficient rules of corporate law in common law countries is a coincidence that might disappear or reverse in other areas of commercial law This paper explores an alternative possibility-that legal origin is not merely an instrument for financial development, but is causal in its own right. The motivation for the hypothesis is Hayek's(1960)argument for the superiority of English to French legal traditions. Hayek viewed the decentralized, judge-made common law as an example of spontaneous order, and a considerable amount of his later work returned to this idea( hayek 1960, 1967, 1973; see Ogus, 1989 for a critical survey ) Because, in Hayek's view, the spontaneous order represented by the common law is more consistent with individual liberty than the more rationalist and constructivist (and therefore more interventionist)tendencies of the civil law, the common law is associated with fewer government restrictions on economic and other liberties. If common law countries ndeed provide greater freedom to their citizens, they should experience more rapid economic growth Hayek's views are correct as a matter of legal history. Although legal systems are most often acquired involuntarily, they were an object of conscious choice in both England and France English common law developed as it did because landed aristocrats and merchants wanted a system of law that would provide strong protections for property and contract rights and limit the crowns ability to interfere in markets. French civil law, by contrast, developed as it did because the revolutionary generation, and Napoleon after it, wished to disable judges from thwarting3 common and civil law countries. Compared to other areas of commercial law, such as contracts or commercial paper, corporate law has been largely code-like in the common law countries from a very early date. This raises the question whether the tendency toward more efficient rules of corporate law in common law countries is a coincidence that might disappear or reverse in other areas of commercial law. This paper explores an alternative possibility–that legal origin is not merely an instrument for financial development, but is causal in its own right. The motivation for the hypothesis is Hayek’s (1960) argument for the superiority of English to French legal traditions. Hayek viewed the decentralized, judge-made common law as an example of spontaneous order, and a considerable amount of his later work returned to this idea (Hayek 1960, 1967, 1973; see Ogus, 1989 for a critical survey). Because, in Hayek’s view, the spontaneous order represented by the common law is more consistent with individual liberty than the more rationalist and constructivist (and therefore more interventionist) tendencies of the civil law, the common law is associated with fewer government restrictions on economic and other liberties. If common law countries indeed provide greater freedom to their citizens, they should experience more rapid economic growth. Hayek’s views are correct as a matter of legal history. Although legal systems are most often acquired involuntarily, they were an object of conscious choice in both England and France. English common law developed as it did because landed aristocrats and merchants wanted a system of law that would provide strong protections for property and contract rights and limit the crown’s ability to interfere in markets. French civil law, by contrast, developed as it did because the revolutionary generation, and Napoléon after it, wished to disable judges from thwarting