GLOBAL LAW AND JUSTICE COLLOQUIUM (2) & (2) (ILS 255)

independent paper option

Professor Ruti Teitel

Globalization is a complex phenomenon that raises important questions of social justice, democracy, human rights and welfare. It also poses new regulatory challenges in respect of the economy, border control, labor and the environment. The seminar will consider the ways in which both states and international institutions are responding to these challenges. It will also provide a forum in which to reflect on the ways in which legal scholars in a range of domestic and international fields are rethinking their fields and disciplines.
How much of ‘globalization’ is actually new; how much is recognizable from the past? Are we really in a world of legal ‘convergence’ or harmonization, or can we see diversity and fragmentation too? Where new problems are emerging, what values and interests are at stake, and what rules and institutions do we possess to manage these changes? What analytic frameworks are available with which to assess them? How are different groups situated in relation to change? What opportunities do different groups possess to influence the direction of change?
This colloquium will provide a survey of state-of-the art scholarship in the emerging field of global law and justice. We will begin with a number of sessions devoted to an introduction to the foundational, substantive and methodological issues surrounding this emerging field, then following on this introduction each week we will read and discuss a recent paper written by a prominent scholar of international law, or related areas such as prominent members of non-law faculties who are working in politics, philosophy, history, and sociology and other disciplines, where relevant to the themes of the colloquium.