Comparative Legal Studies And Internationalization Of Law

This volume provides an overview of the state of internationalisation of legal education (IOLE) in many civil law and common law countries. It provides a picture of the status of the debate about the shape and degree of internationalisation in the curriculum in the different countries, and the debates surrounding the adoption of a more international approach to legal education in the contemporary world. It is a compilation of the National Reports submitted for the August 2014 Congress of the IACL held at Vienna, and contains an introductory general report. Together, the reports examine such questions as: Why is the topic of internationalization of legal education on the agenda now? Why is it a relevant subject for examination today? Does the topic generate the same level of interest everywhere in the world? Is enthusiasm for IOLE mainly driven by the academic sector, by government, by multinational corporations? Is the interest closely linked with the globalization of the practice of law? Or is globalisation of law itself something of a myth, or a reality reserved for only a very small percentage of practising lawyers around the world? The general and national reports make clear that there is indeed widespread interest in IOLE, and numerous disparate initiatives around the world. Nonetheless, some National Reporters state that the topic is simply not on the agenda at all. All in all, the volume shows that the approaches to internationalisation are many and varied, but every jurisdiction recognises the importance of introducing aspiring lawyers to a more integrated global environment.

By combining a method – comparative studies – with an ongoing process – the internationalization of law, that is, its extension beyond national borders – this Chair looks to the future, as uncertain as it may be. Of course current events tragically highlight the absence of a real legal world order. The collective security system of the Charter of the United Nations has shown its weaknesses and law has been unable to disarm force. Conversely, however, force cannot prevent this unprecedented extension of law, to the extent that no State can lastingly override it. In spite of appearances, it is no longer possible today to ignore the superposition of regional, national and global standards, nor the over-abundance of both national and international institutions and judges, with expanded jurisdiction. The new realities are causing law to evolve into complex and highly unstable interactive systems that are perhaps more symptomatic of profound change than of the defeat of law: we are faced with a change in the very conception of the legal order.

The internationalization of commerce and contemporary life has led to a globalization of legal standards and practices. The essays in this text explore this new reality and suggest ways in which the new legal order can be made more just and effective.

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Law - Comparative Legal Systems, Comparative Law, grade: 78%, 17 Punkte, University of Hull, language: English, abstract: In times of globalization and internationalisation comparative legal studies play an ever more important role. Especially against the backdrop of trying to foster understanding of different cultures as well as to enhance the development of domestic legal systems and thereby improve one’s own law , comparative law studies are becoming increasingly significant. Comparative legal studies can be defined as the purposeful analysis of different laws or legal systems through the use of one or more approaches. Comparative law consists of the fields ‘private international law’, ‘the making of law’, ‘the interpretation and application of the law’, ‘the confluence of the law and the development of general common principles’ and ‘the unification of the law’ . The aim of this essay is to explain these five basic fields in which comparative legal studies are employed and to illustrate these subjects by giving examples.

The primary aim of this book is to provide clear and reliable information on a number of central topics in comparative law. At a time when global society is increasingly mobile and legal life is internationalized, the role of comparative law is gaining importance. While the growing interest in this field may well be attributed to the dramatic increase in international legal transactions, this empirical parameter is only part of the explanation. The other part, and (at least) equally important, has to do with the expectation of gaining a deeper understanding of law as a social phenomenon and a fresh insight into the current state and future direction of one’s own legal system. In response to the internationalization of legal practice and theory, law schools around the world have expanded their comparative law programs. Within the legal subjects that form the core of the curriculum there is a greater interest in comparative legal analysis, as well as greater attention to how global developments and international actors and institutions affect domestic law. Transnational legal education based on comparative reasoning is intended to help shape a new generation of lawyers, public servants and other professionals who recognize and respect cultural diversity in an interconnected world. The central topics discussed in this book include: the nature and scope of comparative legal inquiries; the relationship of comparative law to other fields of legal study; the aims and uses of comparative law; the origins and historical development of comparative law; and the evolution and defining features of some of the world’s predominant legal traditions. It also deals with selected theoretical aspects, such as the problem of comparability of legal events; the classification of legal systems into families of law; and the topics of legal transplants, harmonization and convergence of laws. Chiefly intended for students, the book also discusses a number of fundamental issues concerning the development of comparative law, and devotes certain sections to reviewing the salient features of the relevant literature on definitional, terminological, methodological and historical issues.

This book presents the results of research project financed by the Hague Institute for the Internationalization of Law (HiiL) and carried out at the Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) of Tilburg University. The project team shows that globalization, instead of threatening national legal systems, put them in a new role and gives them continuing relevance. First of all, once one takes a more functional view of the law, based on law and economics and comparative law literature, harmonization or unification of national legal systems is no longer a foregone conclusion. Secondly, fundamental constitutional principles continue to bear in the era of multi-level and transnational governance: they become governance principles, divorced from specific institutional settings. Finally, looking beyond regulatory competition and comparative law, legal emulation provides a rich and fruitful model to explain the interplay between legal systems. This book explores these three themes, both at a theoretical level and in the light of specific examples.

The book provides an overview of how international law is today constructed through diverse macro and microprocesses that expand its traditional subjects and sources, with the attribution of sovereign capacity and power to the international plane (moving the international toward the national). Simultaneously, national laws approximate laws of other nations (moving among nations or moving the national toward the international) and new sources of legal norms emerge, independent of states and international organisations. This expansion occurs in many subject areas, with specific structures: commercial, environmental, human rights, humanitarian, financial, criminal and labor law contribute to the formation of post national law with different modes of functioning, different actors and different sources of law that should be understood as a new complexity of law.

Legal transplantation and reform in the name of globalisation is central to the transformation of Asian legal systems. The contributions to "Examining Practice, Interrogating Theory: Comparative Legal Studies in Asia" analyse particular legal changes in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The contributions also concurrently critically analyse the utility of scholarly developments in comparative legal studies, particularly discourse analysis; regulatory theory; legal pluralism; and socio-legal approaches, in the study of Asian legal systems. While these approaches are regularly invoked in the study of transforming European legal systems, the debate of their relevance and explanatory capacity beyond the European context is recent. By bringing together these diverse analytical tools and enabling a comparison of their insights through Asian empirical case studies, this book makes an invaluable contribution to the debates concerning legal change and the methods by which it is analysed globally, and within Asia.