The study of legal transplants provides an important critical complement to the dominant theories of legal change. Legal transplants are not exceptional or isolated events, despite the economic, social, political and cultural barriers that divide the world`s legal systems. This paper goes beyond traditional approaches to the study of transplants by replacing the figurative language of transplants with an explicit theory of how legal change is made. First, it gives a brief overview of what the literature on legal transplants has accomplished so far in terms of “macro” explanations of the legal changes currently available. He then argues that legal transplants, as social acts performed by individuals, require an investigation into the “micro” level of treatment of legal changes by individuals. The key concept put forward to explore this dimension is the notion of mediated action, which refers to actions performed by individuals who use the characteristics of the environment as tools for interaction in a particular environment. The concept of mediated action was first introduced into historical-cultural psychological studies of the social formation of the mind. As social acts, legal transplants represent cases of mediatized action. The final part of this article highlights how legal transplants raise questions of justice and briefly discusses how the new approach to studying transplants advocated here relates to them. ©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston Please log in or register with De Gruyter to order this product.