Mobilizing Private Law: An Introductory Essay

The mobilization of law may be thought of as the process by which legal norms are invoked to regulate behavior. In the area of private law, mobilization has two distinct aspects. The first is the process by which existing disputes become engaged in the legal system. In theory this means that disputes are transferred from an arena where their resolution and the enforcement of resolutions depends on the relative power of the parties as enhanced or constrained by nongovernmental normative systems to an arena where disputes are resolved by reference to governmental (legal) norms and resolutions are enforced by the power of the state. In practice the separation between the governmental and nongovernmental spheres is rarely complete. Legal norms may influence the way in which parties resolve their disputes even when there is no threat that the matter will be taken to law, and both the parties' resources (Galanter, 1974, 1976) and nongovernmental norms“ clearly affect the way disputes are resolved in the legal system.