First Paragraph
Much attention is devoted to the concept of global law schools today and the conversation is prompted, obviously, by the fast emerging global economic village. The law is, in my view, struggling to keep up with these economic developments and to fashion regulatory frameworks that can provide some meaningful oversight to an otherwise laissez-faire driven process. Indeed at some level, the laissez-faire nature of the global economic marketplace is what sparked the controversy and protests that we recently witnessed in Seattle. A year before Seattle we were in another crisis: the global financial crisis, which started as the Asian financial crisis and then spread across the globe. It seems to me that these recent crises illustrate the extent to which legal globalization miserably trails economic globalization. In fact, the really critical player, in my view, in the global financial crisis was the Federal Reserve Board of the United States - very much a domestic actor. The Fed was not the only player, but it may have been the most important one. In a similar vein, some of the controversy that unfolded in Seattle resulted from the speed at which globalization is moving, and the law's relatively slow pace in reacting to economic globalization.
Recommended Citation
John B. Attanasio, Partnerships, Joint Ventures and Other Forms for Building Global Law Schools, 18 Penn St. Int'l L. Rev. 483 (2000).