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A short discourse on law 1/16/2007 1:37:33 PM
In the global environment Comparative and International law are becoming driving forces for business Comparisons of International and Comparative Law
There are often comparisons drawn between international law and comparative law which make the two concepts seem different and at times opposite. In reality, they're two sides of the same coin. International law is nothing more than legal agreements shaped and formed by groups of nations to facilitate international trade, while comparative law is the effort to contrast and compare the structural of laws within countries to achieve that same goal. As the following examples will illustrate although approaching the matter from two different directions they ultimately arrive at the same point; facilitating international trade.
International law is created through the use of custom, international agreements, historical precedent, and practice and usage. In every regard, the structure of international law is always to facilitate and to promote trade. A primary example of international law is the World Trade Organization. This seminal organization was created as nations began to realize the necessity of stable and uninterrupted World Trade in the age of globalization. In 1947 in Breton Woods, New Hampshire, nations of the world came together to set up an economic blueprint for postwar recovery. Governments had come to recognize that international trade was too important to be left in the hands of individual nations. Representatives of United States, Great Britain, Russia, and 41 other nations created an accord which established the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and later in 1947, established the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, known as GATT and the International Trade organization. Although each of these organizations is important, of singular importance is the recognition of the ITO as an agreement between nations of the world concerning the need to facilitate un-interrupted international trade. Although it was unsuccessful, the nations of the world gradually came to recognize the importance of this type of organization, and created its successor, the WTO, in 1995. Today, that organization serves as the principle source of trade dispute resolution, and serves to set policies on other issues, such as immigration. We can see this same development in the evolution of comparative law.
Comparative law is the study of legal systems within individual nations. We will often see comparative law broken down into categories of administrative law, civil law, and constitutional law. In reality, civil law has the greatest impact on global commerce and is where most of the analysis of comparative law will occur. In the civil law context there are two primary types of law that govern the world today. They are the adversarial legal system, which involved out of the English common law, and the inquisitorial legal systems, or civil law systems which evolved out of Roman law. In today's world one area of growing interest is the comparison of these two legal systems as they relate to commercial contracts through the American Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), and its international counterpart, Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The American Uniform Commercial Code was created in the 1950s to simplify commercial transactions throughout the United States. As the United States emerged from World War Two as a dominant military, and economic force, many nations began to adopt major portions of the Uniform Commercial Code as the defacto international system to regulate commercial contracts. This created legal inconsistencies as the two legal systems have fundamental differences in structure. It would not be until 1980 when United Nations created the Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, that the international community began to work toward the creation of a single uniform act to regulate international commercial contracts. Since that time major efforts have been made to bring the American version of commercial contracts into line with its international counterpart. Although differences remain, they are minor in nature. The result of this work in Comparative Law has been a document that facilitates commercial transactions globally. We have arrived at the same point as in our brief look at international law; the facilitation of International Trade.
In today's world all efforts, whether involving international law or comparative law, are designed to facilitate and encourage global transparency in trade. It is immaterial whether you're looking at things from an international legal perspective, or engaging in a comparative legal analysis. The result is the same. In today's world the issue of paramount importance is bringing legal systems into line to facilitate and to promote business transactions in the global marketplace.
References.
Jackson, Arthur, “Chaos, Synchronicity, and Capitalism: The Phases in the Evolution of a Natural System” 2006. (Publication pending)
Frieden, Jeffery A., “Global Capitalism”, W.W. Norton and Company New York, 2006
