Globalization and adjudication

Last Updated on March 25, 2024 by Ranking

Globalization from a European perspective started with Portugal’s travel and trade links with India, Indonesia, China, Japan and Latin America. In order to have these rules legitimately enforced and applied, adjudication based on the rule of law is a necessity. Judges from the British Commonwealth meet from time to time, Councils for the Judiciary have founded international associations.

Mireille Hildebrandt and Serge Gutwirth aim to export the values related to a fair trial to the domain of participatory Technology Assessment (pTA) PTA is a way of giving citizens a say in the development and implementation of new technologies of different kinds. In order to make pTA juries effective, the different principles governing the fair trial are to be transferred into that context.

International Financial Institutions like the World Bank and the IMF play an important role as carriers of these global values while offering aid in law reform and court reform. But teams of lawyers offering ‘aid’ are often carrying home-made law with them. The legal transplants that result from this may look attractive from an international trade perspective. But not addressing the local situation, needs and habits will be a recipe for failure.

Marc Loth and Elaine Mak describe the quantitative and qualitative changes in the judicial domain, with the Netherlands as their main case. For the quantitative paradigm, comparing the Netherlands with the USA, they conclude that the Dutch judicial domain is expanding. Richard Schauffler addresses the issue of court performance measurement, also from the perspective of global developments.