From Socialist to Roman Concepts: The Reform of Property Law in a Developing World

Abstract

This article examines structural problems in Vietnamese property law arising from the reception of mixed legal transplants during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through historical-comparative analysis of the 2015 Civil Code of Vietnam, it identifies six critical deficiencies in the codification of personal property law (law of obligations and rights in personam): inconsistencies in code model selection, structural incoherence, overlapping provisions, conflicts between orthodox socialist legality and revived civilian tradition, problematic selective borrowing from divergent civil and common law systems, and insufficient engagement with civilian legal science. The analysis demonstrates how Vietnam’s unique legal trajectory combining socialist legal orthodoxy with market-oriented civil law revival—generates systematic tensions that transcend typical mixed jurisdiction challenges. These structural deficiencies manifest in three dimensions: internal contradictions within the code itself, impaired effectiveness in legal application, and compromised consistency in adjudication leading to unjust outcomes. The article argues that the root cause lies not merely in hasty incorporation of new legal phenomena, but in the absence of coherent codification philosophy grounded in civilian legal science. By tracing the historical reception of property law traditions and analysing their interaction within a single national framework, this study contributes to comparative understanding of legal transplant pathologies and offers insights for legal reform in transitional systems navigating between socialist legality and civilian tradition.