Globalization and Law-Making: Time to Shift a Legal Theory's Paradigm

The purpose of this article is to identify certain areas for discussion concerning the relations between globalization and law-making, in particular when dealing with law-making in legal systems “adopting” global legal categories. The analysis starts by questioning the lack of interest legal theory has evidenced as to lawmaking aimed at introducing “global laws” in the addressees' systems. The focus then shifts to two issues exemplifying the importance of a legal theoretical approach to the law-making processes also taking place inside globalization. The first is the oft-neglected central role legal actors play in law-making. The second deals with the dated conception of law-making in the globalization era shared by the vast majority of legal scholarship. While the latter tends to see the law-making process in the globalized world as a series of linear law-making processes taking place at different levels, a model of non-linear law-making based on the concept of legal discourses is proposed here. The analysis finally suggests possible points from which the construction of a middle range legal-theoretical approach to law-making in the globalization phenomenon can begin.