Virtually all criminal justice systems today overlap, interact and blend with other criminal justice systems. The traditional model of a single nation-state, which has the exclusive power to criminalize those within its borders, is challenged from below by sub-state demands for municipal autonomy and from above by international and global criminal justice demands.1 Not surprisingly, control of the criminal justice system has become a major legal battleground between nation states and their protesting nation-states. substate and suprastate. Criminal justice is still considered a sine qua non for the sovereignty of States. The sovereignist position is opposed by internationalist and pluralist positions, which claim only international or pluralist positions. Subnational units can and should play a crucial role in criminal justice. Internationalists praise the importance of strong supranational criminal justice institutions – both those that aim to keep national judicial systems in conformity with human rights standards, such as regional human rights courts, and those that directly prosecute and adjudicate the most serious violations of international criminal law. like the ICC.8 For internationalists, there are universal norms that call – or at least – international enforcement mechanisms to recommend. On the other hand, pluralists advocate for the legitimacy of a sub-national community-based criminal justice system, particularly by and for indigenous peoples and other traditionally marginalized minority groups.
Pluralists point out that some subnational communities have a long tradition of self-government and can articulate and enforce community norms more effectively for themselves than the state structures in which they live. In short, for pluralists, there are common standards that require, or at least recommend, common enforcement mechanisms. While claims for sub-state jurisdiction are testing the nation-state from below, the spectacular rise of international criminal law and its claims to supranational jurisdiction challenge states from above. International criminal law is an area that has only just been highlighted, but it is not a new phenomenon. In its early days, international criminal law consisted of certain material crimes considered so harmful to the world order that they allowed the suspension of the usual territorial model of criminal justice. Piracy is the most established and venerable international crime, and since at least the eighteenth century, international law has recognized that any sovereign can prosecute acts of piracy, regardless of the location of the crime, the nationality of the perpetrators or the nationality of the victims.35 The first major category of international crimes, war crimes, was codified in a series of international conventions in the late nineteenth century. [7] and the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals after World War II marked the first institutionalized attempt to punish state officials through international criminal proceedings. [8] Reports of the death of the nation-state are greatly exaggerated. For the foreseeable future, nation-states will continue to be the principal judicial organs of criminal justice – the principal legislators, executors and judges of criminal law.
But sub-state and supra-state challenges to this jurisdiction will not disappear, and criminal justice officials and legal commentators will have to face the reality of partially autonomous criminal justice regimes at the sub-state and supra-state levels. The current struggles between sovereignists, internationalists and pluralists will not end in a decisive victory for a vision of criminal justice. However, a limited pluralism approach offers a path forward that respects nation-state values while allowing judicial authorities to make supranational and subnational claims. For the scholars involved in this book, the outlook for national law seemed less bleak than is usually acknowledged. The project team shows that globalization does not threaten national legal systems, but gives them a new role and continues to give them relevance. First, the harmonization or unification of national legal systems is no longer self-evident if one considers law on the basis of law and economy as well as comparative law literature in a more functional way. Second, fundamental constitutional principles continue to apply in the era of multi-level and transnational governance: they become principles of governance, detached from specific institutional frameworks. Finally, beyond regulatory competition and comparative law, legal emulation provides a rich and fruitful model for explaining the interaction between legal systems. This book explores these three themes, both theoretically and in the light of concrete examples. It sheds new light on the fate of national legal systems, with a more optimistic perspective.
Researchers and practitioners will discover how this research project takes us one step forward in understanding the development of national legal systems in the era of globalization. We live in dark, dark times. Many institutions of interlocking governance and democratic coexistence, carefully maintained since 1945, are under attack. Nationalism, tribalism, xenophobia and racism fuel right-wing populist revolts against this legal order, although the period since 1945 has seen an improvement in health, longevity, prosperity and peace that is perhaps unprecedented in human history. This book sheds new light on the fate of national legal systems in the era of globalization, with a more optimistic message than elsewhere in the literature. This book was written by a team of experts in comparative law and law and economics, two perspectives rarely brought together. This book also contains numerous practical studies, on the draft Common Framework of Reference, on the new Civil Code of Central and Eastern Europe, on the EU Regulation on electronic communications and energy (both institutional and material), on impact assessments and on national and European justice. The political, legal, economic and social contours of the current international landscape pose major challenges for global health policy. If improving the most common causes of illness, disability and premature death requires global solutions, then the future is demoralizing. States that bear the disproportionate burden of the disease are least able to cope with it.
And states that can afford to do so are deeply opposed to using the political capital and economic resources needed to make a real difference to improve health beyond their borders. When rich countries act, it is often out of narrow national interest or humanitarian instinct rather than a complete sense of ethical or legal obligation. The result is a rapid deterioration of health in the poorest regions, with obvious global consequences for cross-border disease transmission and systemic implications for trade, international relations and security. For global health law to be an effective means of halting this catastrophic dynamic, the international community must overcome four «major challenges» of global health law, namely: persistent and difficult to overcome obstacles to using the law as an effective tool to achieve equitable global health (Gates Foundation, 2003). State-centred in the international legal system. Biased prioritization. Faulty implementation and compliance. fragmentation, duplication and lack of coordination.
The German jurist Savigny says that the law is the spirit of the community, which means that the provisions of the law must meet the needs of the community and solve its problems. The changing norms and customs of peoples leads to a change in needs and problems. Multinational corporations play various roles in creating international ethical business rules and regulations by pushing for changes in their legal systems and laws for more economic interests. With regard to the nature of crime itself, the phenomenon of globalization had reflected its impact on organized crime and had made crimes particularly serious. Since exceptional openness in trade, finance, travel and communications has created economic growth and prosperity, it has also created huge opportunities for criminals to make their businesses a success. New types of crime are well organized and criminals use the latest techniques to commit them, such as computers, network systems, information systems, the Internet and communication technologies. The character of crime has been dramatically revolutionized in a single generation. Decades ago, crime was organized according to a hierarchy of operations. It was «industrial» because it involved the division of labor and the specialization of operations. This composition extended globally, with organized crime mimicking global trade [26]. Globalization has changed not only the nature of crime, but also its types and forms, the nature of criminals and victims, and location. Moreover, in the era of globalization, modern means of crime had become more developed than before and national legislation was paralyzed to deal with such crime.
According to Findlay, the globalization of the market has increasingly created new opportunities for criminals. Andrea Di Nicola and Alessandro Scartezzini argue that «globalization has given those interested in fraud, for example, the opportunity to act internationally, taking advantage of the lack of regulation in the commercial and financial markets of some countries.» The phenomenon of crime has spread throughout the world as a result of globalization, creating a legal crisis that must be addressed. This crisis has placed the credibility and effectiveness of the law in a delicate position, which requires concerted efforts not only at the legal level, but also at the economic and even moral level to mitigate the negative aspects of globalization.
