alt Hacker NewsProbably because the US was founded by the immigrants who fled because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries, and designed a system that's diametral opposed to that, for better and for worse.
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Right, that's what I'd lean to as well.
But was the reason they left the legal tradition? In this telling of the story, they were fully aware of the legal tradition being the reason for their unhappiness. But is it true?
I know the original immigrants/colonists were looking for a specific kind of religious freedom they couldn't have, but you must be speaking of the later waves (which are the majority of people).
I remember ages ago reading this paper (PDF warning): https://annesofiebeckknudsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...
It made the case that (simplifying) individualists left for the US while collectivists stayed. And because of the massive scale of the migration relative to the populations, this meant that the two regions were permanently altered. Cool, eh?
But I don't know if the thesis has been supported by alternative tests. Essentially, it's what I feel is true, but I've felt many things are true and been wrong many times!
> because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries
48/56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were born in the 13 colonies, and I think for a lot of them what they hated about the way the system worked is that they weren't fully part of it. ("No taxation without representation")
> immigrants who fled because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries
I'm not convinced, as the people who designed the US system had extensive exchanges with the ones who ended up designing the modern French one, which became the basis for most of the rest of Europe (bar the UK).
The US and continental European systems were both designed in concert and in opposition to how the old European monarchies worked.