Abstract

Whereas common lawyers traditionally recognized the superiority of civil law from a legal point of view, they now derive the same superiority from the performance of their economies. This evolution must be analysed through the lenses of a clash between neo-American capitalism and Rhine capitalism, i.e. the one linked to common law systems and the one typical for civil law countries. In this clash, common law systems can rely on the support of the World Bank, whose Doing business reports aim at demonstrating the efficiency of common law from a neoliberal point of view. Even if the publication of the Reports has been discontinued due to data irregularities, new initiatives of the World Bank will carry on the same approach.