Lawyers and the Rule of Law in an Era of Globalization focuses on the national and transnational processes transforming both the rule of law and the role of lawyers. Drawing on detailed empirical work, the contributors all examine the relationship between law, politics, and the state; focusing on lawyers and the social capital they posses and deploy, in order to understand the efficacy of the rule of law in different polities.

Lawyers and the Construction of Transnational Justice will show students and scholars what it means in practice to talk about building transnational justice - both on the side of economic regulation and on the side of human rights and humanitarian law. It links national and transnational processes, tracing the activities of lawyers with their successful and less successful strategies to build institutions and credibility for a transnational legal field. Examples include developments in international criminal justice, including the unsuccessful quest to establish universal jurisdiction for the prosecution of human rights violators; the very successful efforts to build transnational trade and intellectual property regimes; and the relative success in building a European legal field. The introductory and concluding chapters by the co-editors, drawing on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, link the chapters together and explore the possibilities for a more institutionalized and unified transnational legal field - bridging the economic and corporate side with the human rights and humanitarian side.Addressing a range of international issues, Lawyers and the Construction of Transnational Justice is a major contribution to the field of sociology of law, as well as to debates about global governance.

Lawyers and the Construction of Transnational Justice will show students and scholars what it means in practice to talk about building transnational justice both on the side of economic regulation and on the side of human rights and humanitarian law. It links national and transnational processes, tracing the activities of lawyers with their successful and less successful strategies to build institutions and credibility for a transnational legal field. Examples include developments in international criminal justice, including the unsuccessful quest to establish universal jurisdiction for the prosecution of human rights violators; the very successful efforts to build transnational trade and intellectual property regimes; and the relative success in building a European legal field. The introductory and concluding chapters by the co-editors, drawing on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, link the chapters together and explore the possibilities for a more institutionalized and unified transnational legal field bridging the economic and corporate side with the human rights and humanitarian side. Addressing a range of international issues, Lawyers and the Construction of Transnational Justice is a major contribution to the field of sociology of law, as well as to debates about global governance.

Lawyers and the Rule of Law in an Era of Globalization focuses on the national and transnational processes transforming both the rule of law and the role of lawyers. The book draws on a framework that emphasizes the relationship between the national and the international, the strategies of lawyers at various political levels, and the circulation of ideas and people. As such, it considers the 'rule of law', not as a normative ideal that has to be accomplished and realized, but rather as a field of action and discourse that emerges through complex relationships among experts, national elites and global institutions. Through detailed empirical work, the contributors all examine the relationship between law, politics, and the state; focusing on lawyers and the social capital they posses and deploy, in order to understand the efficacy of the rule of law in different polities. Lawyers and the Rule of Law in an Era of Globalization will be invaluable for socio-legal scholars, students of the legal profession, as well as those with interests in law and development studies.

This book describes a century of tremendous legal change, of inspiring legal developments, and profound failures. The twentieth century took the United States from the Progressive Era's optimism about law and social engineering to current concerns about a hyperlegalistic society, from philosophical idealism to the implementation of democracy, the rule of law, and the idea of human rights throughout the world. At the same time, law maintained its status as the key language of governance in the United States, the most "legal" of all countries, which has succeeded in making its version of the state a point of reference around the globe.

This book, with contributors from nine countries, seeks to critically understand the processes of legal education reform and resistance and to point to what these processes mean for law and lawyers inside and outside of the United States. The book seeks to understand the forces driving these processes and to evaluate their implications. Its substantive chapters provide critical insights into how these transnational processes operate in different jurisdictions around the world in light of globalization and local competition. Taken together, the chapters show how institutions and practices of legal education have historically moved across jurisdictions and shaped legal education practices transnationally, as well as the challenges and limits these processes have faced. The chapters also show how that diffusion relates to empires and imperial competition, and in particular today to the rise in power of the United States after the Cold War-and the related diffusion of neoliberal economic policies that have also fueled the spread of corporate law firms modeled on the United States. The book shows how local processes play and evolve in relation to global balances of power. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence.