Since the end of the Second World War, and particularly following the end of the Cold War, the American legal system arguably has become the most influential legal system in the world. American influences on the legal systems of other nations have ranged from general influences on jurisprudential approaches to law (e.g., legal realism and pragmatism, law and economics, rights discourse, etc.) to influences on specific legal areas (e.g., constitutional law, tax law, securities law, corporate law, patent law, international commercial arbitration, etc.); from legal education (e.g., a credits system for particular courses, or certain post-graduate studies leading to an LL.M. degree) and the structure of the legal profession (e.g., large law firms or the valorization of private practice) to the reform of the judiciary; from specific legal doctrines or legal tools (e.g., constitutional exclusionary rules, the doctrine of “actual malice” in the freedom of speech and of the press, class actions, etc.) to institutional arrangements such as the separation of powers and judicial review. These undeniable American influences on other legal systems have led a number of commentators, both in the United States and abroad, to announce that a substantial number of legal systems, both at the national and the international levels, may gradually come to resemble or mimic the American legal system and thus become “Americanized.” Other commentators, while acknowledging the predominant influence of the American legal system, have stopped short of asserting that American influence is actually recreating American legal practice in non-American jurisdictions. In this Article, I caution against the former thesis of Americanization (the “strong” thesis) through an examination of the introduction of American-style plea bargaining in four civil law countries—Germany, Italy, Argentina, and France.
