Monthly Archives: February 2012
Global Law: A Legal Phenomenon Emerging from the Process of Globalization
This article addresses the following question: Is Global Law merely a trendy theory, or are there concrete and factual elements allowing submission of irrefutable evidence of a movement toward the creation of a stand-alone international legal system? In this piece, … Continue reading
The Globalization of the Legal Profession
On April 6, 2006, the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington served as host to a long overdue conversation on how economic globalization is reshaping the legal profession. Participants included academics from law and business, managing partners, practicing lawyers, in-house counsel, … Continue reading
Lawyers as Sanctifiers: The Role of Elite Law Firms in International Business Transactions
Globalization has fundamentally accelerated and altered business transactions. The search for low labor costs and cheap raw materials has led to a proliferation of international transactions, and large, international law firms are called on to participate in complex transactions helping … Continue reading
Ethical Codes and Cultural Context: Ensuring Legal Ethics in the Global Law Firm
There are doubtless many practical and professional problems that arise in the global legal practice, but this paper suggests that not least of these are issues of legal ethics, in part generated by the global context and not easily amenable … Continue reading
The Globalization of Legal Practice in the Internet Age
The Internet’s global reach has had a significant impact on the legal profession. This essay explains a few of the key developments in this area, including: competition fueled by outsourcing legal work to lower-wage earning lawyers around the world, “virtual … Continue reading
Laïcité in the United States or The Separation of Church and State in a Pluralist Society
American separation of church and state is much more exigent than French laïcité, in that it prohibits the state from helping one or all religions in any manner; either in making religious representatives accredited and recognized political interlocutors in political … Continue reading
Modern Condottieri in Iraq: Privatizing War from the Perspective of International and Human Rights Law
The publication in April 2004 of the shocking photos depicting Iraqi prisoners that had allegedly been abused by U.S. military personnel took world opinion by surprise. The question was raised how this could have happened and whether U.S. military personnel … Continue reading
Using Global Themes to Reframe the Bioprospecting Debate
The objective of this Note is to use global themes and perspectives to aid in reframing the bioprospecting debate. The current state of this debate, its problems, and proposed solutions are reviewed. In looking at the impact of local responses … Continue reading
Why Religion in Politics Does Not Violate la Conception Américaine de la Laïcité
La conception Américaine de la laïcité consists principally of a constitutional norm-the nonestablishment norm-and of the law that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed in the course of enforcing the norm. The nonestablishment norm forbids government-both the national government and … Continue reading
Dependency by Law: Poverty, Identity, and Welfare Privatization
Privatization of welfare reflects the political pressure to limit public responsibility for protection of social citizenship. Recent welfare reforms incorporate three classic market-like privatization mechanisms-contracting out services, forcing allocation of a limited pool of benefits, and deregulation. Deregulation entails strategic … Continue reading
Church and State in the United States: Competing Conceptions and Historic Changes
This article, originally written for a French audience, attempts to explain the American law of church and state from the ground up, assuming no background information. Basic legal provisions are explained. The relevant American history is periodized in three alignments … Continue reading
The Forgotten Threat: Private Policing and the State
What do Disneyland, the Abu Ghraib U.S. military prison, the Mall of America, and the Y-12 nuclear security complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee have in common? They have wildly different purposes, but they share a common characteristic as employers of … Continue reading
Separation of Church and State in the United States: Lost in Translation?
In this article, the absence of an American equivalent to the French word laícité becomes an ethnographic opening to an exploration of the church-state divide in the U.S. context. Drawing on classic social theory, sociological accounts, and current events, I … Continue reading
Religious Exemptions, Formal Neutrality, and Laícité
Rights to free exercise in the United States are governed by a doctrine of formal neutrality, which seems to resemble the French doctrine of laícité. This resemblance tempts one to conclude that the doctrinal regimes of religious liberty in the … Continue reading
Secularization, Religiosity, and the United States Constitution
This article draws upon leading works in the sociology of religion to assess what I shall call “the secularization claim” regarding the United States. It endeavors, in particular, to clarify the possible meanings of “secularization,” and then to use these … Continue reading
Religious Expression and Symbolism in the American Constitutional Tradition: Governmental Neutrality, But Not Indifference
In this article, I describe and analyze three principles of First Amendment doctrine. First, the Establishment Clause generally forbids governmental expression that has the purpose or effect of promoting or endorsing religion. Second, and conversely, private religious expression is broadly … Continue reading