Suchergebnisse

Globalization of law may be defined as the worldwide progression of transnational legal structures and discourses along the dimensions of extensity, intensity, velocity, and impact. We propose that a theory of the global penetration of law will require at least four elements—actors, mechanisms, power, and structures and arenas. A comparison of four approaches to globalization and law—world polity, world systems, postcolonial globalism, and law and economic development—indicates considerable variation in perceived outcomes and gaps in explanation, but with possible complementarities in both outcomes and explanatory factors. Research demonstrates that globalization is variably contested in several domains of research on law: (a) the construction and regulation of global markets, (b) crimes against humanity and genocide, (c) the diffusion of political liberalism and constitutionalism, and (d) the institutionalization of women's rights. We propose that the farther globalizing legal norms and practices are located from core local cultural institutions and beliefs, the less likely global norms will provoke explicit contestation and confrontation. Future research will be productively directed to where and how global law originates, how and when global norms and law are transmitted and enforced, and how global-local settlements are negotiated.

Professions and Bankruptcy Reforms in Britain and the United States : Redistributing Property and Jurisdictional Rights across the Public-Private Frontier.
The sociologies of law, professions, and politics rarely converge on the process of statutory reform. This paper argues that the concepts of property and jurisdictional rights provide a basis for theoretical convergence and a more compelling explanation of legal change where property redistribution is at stake. Using the cases of Insolvency Act 1986 in Britain and the 1978 U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the paper examines four processes of change concerned respectively with high property rights cases (Valorization of Judges, U.S., Empowerment of Insolvency Practitioners, U.K.) and low property rights cases (Nationalization of Administration, U.S. and Privatisation of Administration, U.K.). It proposes (1) that legal change frequently triggers jurisdictional struggles among professions and the latter in turn shape substantive and administrative law ; (2) in contemporary politics, a key struggle over jurisdictional rights frequently occurs across the public/private boundary, where inter-professional struggle is less over market share, than the expansion or contraction of the market itself ; and (3) substantive legal changes frequently constellate political forces — including party politics, professional politics, and political adventitiousness — with outcomes quite extraneous to the substantive merits of the law reforms themselves.