Globalization, the Rule of Law, and the Modern Law Merchant: Medieval or Late Capitalist Associations?

In: Constellations: an international journal of critical and democratic theory, Band 8, Heft 4, S. 480-502

Abstract

The globalization of private international trade law, or the Modern Law Merchant (Lex Mercatoria), is said to revive the medieval tradition of common law & serves to provide a source of global governance in an increasingly pluralistic legal order. The nature & operation of the Modern Law Merchant as a juridical link between local & global political economies is analyzed. It is argued that this system of governance does not provide the much-needed public good of commercial certainty, but instead provides fundamentally private goods that benefit narrow First World interests. Its private governance agreements meet the needs of late, not medieval, capitalism, & of the global mercatocracy, which needs to adjust legal governance to a situation of flexible & transnational capital accumulation & intensified global competition. The idea that there are plural or multiple centers of global authority obscures the unified activities of this central agent & the extension of private international law into a full range of international commerce. M. Pflum