Globalization And Private Law

This timely book explores the relationship between private law and globalization. It examines the consequences of the fact that law making now takes place in a globalized world which increasingly leads to questions of accountability and legitimacy of the law making process. Within this work, European and South African scholars deal with the relationship between private law and globalization in fourteen innovative chapters, addressing inter alia globalization, democracy and accountability, harmonization versus decentralization, public law issues, corporate governance, procedural issues as well as human rights and the environment. This well-documented and original study will be a valuable resource for academics and legal practitioners as well as students. Specialists in private law, transnational law, international law and legal theory should also not be without this important book.

Demonstrating the crucial role that private international law and legality has played and continues to play in shaping globalization, this book argues that the rules, institutions, and actors that make up the practice of private international law have been critical in translating political and economic power into legal regimes that have facilitated the processes of globalization. These processes depend on two fundamental types of socio-political action – the legal structuring of emerging transnational spaces and flows of goods, capital, and finance, and the legal-political reconfiguration of state power and priorities to facilitate the growth of these spaces and their penetration into national political-economic-and social spaces. While a variety of processes were involved in these forms of action, the material practices of private international law played a central role in this project of political economic reconstruction. Offering a theory of private international legality as a practice that intersects with and provides a vehicle for the mobilization of political and economic power, this book examines the construction and enrolment of private law expertise and the structural condition of pluralism in the global political economy to argue that private international law has helped construct a global political economy responsive to the priorities of powerful actors and resistant to the demands and interests of the rest of the world’s populations. It will be of interest to academics and students exploring the relationship between law, international political economy and the nature of state power.

There is a growing clamour - particularly from the main beneficiaries of globalization - that rules need to be established to govern the international economy, with a specific focus on questions such as copyright violations, trade sanctions and protections for foreign investment. Those who perceive they are disadvantaged by globalization demand other legal protections in relation to employment, cultural traditions and the environment.

Horatia Muir Watt and Diego P. Fernández-Arroyo: Introduction: The Relevance of Private International Law to the Global Governance Debate Part I: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: THE PRIVATE MODEL AND ITS DISCONTENTS Section A. Epistemological Challenge: The Meaning of 'Private' in Private International Law 1: Geoffrey Samuel: Comparative Law as Resistance 2: Robert Wai: Private v Private: Transnational Private Law and Contestation in Global Economic Governance 3: Ralf Michaels: Post-critical Private International Law: From Politics to Technique Section B. Political Critique: Privatization as Homogenization 4: Tomaso Ferrando: Global Land Grabbing: A Tale of Three Legal Homogenizations 5: Veronica Corcodel: Governance Implications of Comparative Legal Thinking: On Henry Maine's Jurisprudence and British Imperialism Section C. Searching for Legitimacy: Questions of Design 6: Diego P. Fernández-Arroyo: Private Adjudication Without Precedent? 7: Gilles Cuniberti: The Merchant Who Would Not Be King: Unreasoned Fears about Private Lawmaking 8: Yannick Radi: Balancing the Public and the Private in International Investment Law PART II: BEYOND THE SCHISM: EMERGING MODELS AND WORLDVIEWS Section A. The Global Turn to Informality: Pragmatism and Constructivism 9: Benoit Frydman: A Pragmatic Approach To Global Law 10: Harm Schepel: Rules of Recognition: A Legal Constructivist Approach to Transnational Private Regulation 11: Michael Karayanni: The Extraterritorial Application of Access to Justice Rights: On the Availability of Israeli Courts to Palestinian Plaintiffs Section B. Re-importing Public Law Methodology: Federalism and Constitutionalism 12: Alex Mills: Variable Geometry, Peer Governance, and the Public International Perspective on Private International Law 13: Jacco Bomhoff: The Constitution of the Conflict of Laws 14: Jérémy Heymann: Importing Proportionality to the Conflict of Laws Section C. Reinventing a Global Horizon: Working towards a Global Public Good 15: Bram van der Eem: Financial Stability and Private International Law 16: Ivana Isailovic: Recognition(and Mis-recognition) in Private International Law 17: Sabine Corneloup: Can Private International Law Contribute to Global Migration Governance? Horatia Muir Watt: Paradigm Change in Private International Law: Renewal, Circularity, or Decline?

Analysis of the power of multinational corporations in moulding international law on intellectual property rights.

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.

This text is an invaluable tool for students on undergraduate and postgraduate management programmes containing elements of general and international business law. The legal dimension in managerial decisions is shown, and on-line resources provide current material to support the text.