Article by Thomas Fleiner
Globalization and its counterpart “localization” are well-known challenges in today's world. The development of globalization will cause the integration of national legal systems through the enactment of formal international laws, such as bilateral treaties and multilateral organizations, and through the factual internationalization of markets, science, environmental protection, traffic, migration, and communication. The question is whether the traditional legal systems are prepared for such developments or whether they will impede them or simply implode, as the communist system did. The obvious challenge for comparative lawyers is to discover the basic legal problems of the integration of these legal systems, to analyze the possibilities of this integration, and to determine when partnership and cooperation are indispensable in order to foster diversity.
This Article analyzes the primary historical roots of the differences between common law and the continental legal systems with regard to constitutional and administrative law. Although both common law and the continental legal systems are committed to the constitutionalism of the modernity, their diversities are fundamental. To see such diversities as the enrichment of our global society should enlighten us; therefore, those diversities should not be destroyed by unreflected integration but should be fostered as an indication of respect for human nature and culture.
About the Author
Thomas Fleiner.
Citation
75 Tul. L. Rev. 929 (2001)