2
Globalisation and the World Revolution
Te chnology is a key element of globalisation. The effects of globalisation are fre-
quently explored in the context of sovereignty. Technology therefore has con-
stitutional implications. Perceived legal correlates to globalisation, such as the
blurring divide between private and public international law through present
constitutional issues associated with competing jurisdictions, legal pluralism,
multinational enterprises and a ‘world society’, are related to the technological
innovation associated with the World Revolution of the two world wars of the
twentieth century. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that these legal develop-
ments are simple reactions to technological and economic forces of globalisa-
tion representing the latest political and economic goals. Far from today’s legal
responses being surface events, deeply layered sediments of legal and political
philosophy and history underlie the topsoil intersections of law and globalisa-
tion. Globalisation and law cannot be understood without delving into the
deeper sediments, pursued in later chapters. In this chapter, the topsoil forma-
tions are first surveyed in order to identify the sites of authority for later
excavation.
The general notion of globalisation as ‘the accelerated interconnections
amongst things that happen in the world’ will be maintained after some inves-
tigation. The terrorist events of ‘September 11’ 2001, in the United States,
confirm this definition. (Within a fortnight, the world aviation industry was
plunged into dire financial circumstances, international tourism reeled and the
insurance industry faced massive losses.) After observing the profound associ-
ated challenges for social time and space in this chapter, a novel model will be
proposed in chapter 3 to complete the outline for a globalist jurisprudence the
subject of part 2. That will in turn enable, in the balance of this book, an appre-
ciation of the nature of legal authority today by reference to the past millen-
nium. Patterns of law and authority from the first half of the second millennium
will be seen to be recurring today. Recognition of these patterns and the assess-
ment of law in different locations and times will be essential to advancing a

ity, particularly where judgements are concerned. That is, there may be other
ways of looking at things. There may not be one divine set of norms to govern
all people.
Chaos theory provides more useful symbolism. The study of natural phe-
nomena in all their complexity is attempted by chaos theory, unlike classical
science which tends to be reductionist and limiting of its variables. Chaos
theory posits the significant interconnections amongst relatively distant,
minute things that happen in the world.
4
In the common example now
approaching a cliché, a butterfly fluttering its wings in one hemisphere of the
world may have a significant effect in the other hemisphere, by way of snow-
balling weather effects which are initiated by the seemingly minor activity of the
butterfly. Benoit Mandelbrot discovered a mathematical formula in fractal
geometry which underlies chaos theory – positing that randomness produces
26 Towards a Globalist Jurisprudence
111
Langer, Philosophy in a New Key cited in Michael Walzer, ‘On the Role of Symbolism in
Political Thought’ (1967) 82 Political Science Quarterly 191–204, 194.
112
Walzer, ‘Role of Symbolism’, 197.
113
See Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the
Paradigmatic Transition (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 18.
114
See James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 1987).
recurring patterns, reflected in the related shapes of, for example, a tree, broc-
coli or the coastline viewed from a distance. His formula, in plot form, pro-
duces a psychedelic, paisley-like pattern which, when magnified, discloses at
the edges of the pattern a further paisley-like pattern, within the edges of

of some non-European societies in ‘international’ society, and, perhaps most
significantly, the ‘[v]ery sharp increase in the number and speed of global forms
of communication’ and the development of global competitions such as the
Olympics. From the early 1920s to the mid-1960s, the fourth ‘struggle for hege-
mony’ phase saw disputes and wars about national ideals formalised from the
previous phase. Humanity was confronted with the Holocaust, atomic bomb
27 Globalisation and the World Revolution
115
This is a theme of Fredric Jameson, ‘Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue’ in
Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (eds.), The Cultures of Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1998).
and United Nations.
6
Finally, there is the ‘uncertainty phase’ from the 1960s,
which brings us to the present, discussed in the next section.
Commerce-led cultural interconnection has been a characteristic of world
and not just Western history since very early times. In the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, it received a boost with the Industrial Revolution and the
free thinking of British economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The
separation at that time of the economic and political spheres, leaving the market
more to its own devices, in effect de-moralised production.
7
The effect on pro-
ductivity was tremendous, illustrated by the hegemonic success of England in
the following century
8
as the premier exemplar of this approach to political
economy. Here, most likely, are to be found the profound sources of what is
today termed ‘globalisation’. Although the world economy had been becoming
noticeably more integrated from the sixteenth century onwards, it was not until

7
See ch. 8, section 8.3, pp. 177–8 below.
118
See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 151–8; Martin Daunton,
‘Britain and Globalisation Since 1850: I. Creating a Global Order, 1850–1914’ (2006) 16
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1–38.
119
See Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘After Columbus: Explaining the Global Trade
Boom, 1500–1800’ (March 2001) NBER Working Paper No. W8186.
110
See David Held and Anthony McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2002), p. 39.
111
Paul R. Krugman, Pop Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 212.
112
Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question: The International Economy
and the Possibilities of Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2nd edn, 1999), p. 9. In 1910,
‘international investment as a percentage of total investment was higher than at any other
time’: Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 52.
matters as the word, invented by Jeremy Bentham at the end of the eighteenth
century, suggests. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that this notion
began to be modified with persuasiveness.
13
Hans Kelsen was the only major
legal positivist to see international law and national municipal law as part of a
unity: he maintained that the basic foundational norm (Grundnorm) which
gave all law its constitutional validity was from international law.
14

Numerous utopian proposals had nonetheless found their way into the history of
international relations and law, surveyed where they occur in the chronological developments
mapped in parts 2, 3 and 4 of this book.
114
See Danilo Zolo, ‘Hans Kelsen: International Peace Through International Law’ (1998) 9
European Journal of International Law 306–24.
115
See Hedley Bull, ‘Hans Kelsen and International Law’ in Richard Tur and William Twining
(eds.), Essays on Kelsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 170.
116
See Hersch Lauterpacht, International Law and Human Rights (London: Stevens & Sons,
1950). Other modern writings to this end, prior to consciousness of ‘globalisation’, include
C. Wilfred Jenks, The Common Law of Mankind (London: Stevens, 1958); Julius Stone, Of Law
and Nations: Between Power Politics and Human Hopes (Buffalo: W. S. Hein, 1974), ch. 1. On
the late nineteenth-century capture of preliminary human rights in international law by
Pasquale Fiore, see Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of
International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 54–7.
117
See Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage
Publications, 1992 reprinted 1998), pp. 12–15, discussing Wallerstein’s ‘world-systems
theory’.
growing to 143 times in 1997, 260 in 1998, 280 in 1999, 355 in 2000 and 373 by
early September 2001.
18
Around 1996, William Twining ran searches for the words ‘global’ and ‘glob-
alization’ in a library catalogue. After scanning some 250 titles, his synthesis of
a definition of globalisation is useful. He uses the word ‘globalization’ ‘to refer
to those processes which tend to create and consolidate a world economy, a
single ecological system, and a complex network of communications that covers
the whole globe, even if it does not penetrate to every part of it’

Sensitive to local diversities and identities, Boaventura de Sousa Santos writes
that:
the globalization process is connected to other transformations in the world
system which are nonetheless irreducible to it, such as growing world-level
inequality, population explosion, environmental catastrophe, proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, formal democracy as a political condition for inter-
national assistance to peripheral and semiperipheral countries and so on.
25
30 Towards a Globalist Jurisprudence
118
Vic Caroll, ‘What if . . . free trade had won in 1901’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 2001.
119
William Twining, ‘Globalization and Legal Theory: Some Local Implications’ (1996) 49
Current Legal Problems 1–42, 2.
20
Robertson, Globalization p. 8.
121
Anthony Giddens, Sociology cited in Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Toward a New Legal Common
Sense: Law, Globalization and Emancipation (London: Butterworths, 2nd edn 2002), p. 165.
1
22
Definitions abound, particularly in the social and cultural studies spheres: see generally, Frank
Lechner and John Boli (eds.), The Globalization Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2nd
edn 2004).
23
His sketch to this point was outlined in section 2.1.2, pp. 27–8 above.
1
24
Robertson, ‘Mapping the Global Condition’, p. 27.
1

of a global product. Looking deeper, Coca-Cola is an example of a local product,
originating late in the nineteenth century, in Georgia, USA, as an inauspicious
elixir among many such elixirs which have since fallen by the wayside. In his
model of ideal-types of globalisation, Santos describes this phenomenon as one
of ‘globalized localism’ – a local product turned global. Oppositely, the phe-
nomenon of ‘localized globalism’ may be identified – where a global phenom-
enon has a uniquely local effect.
28
According to one of his examples, local
society and environment may change in response to transnational influences
such as tourism impacting on local crafts or wildlife. It can also be seen, for
example, in the impact of ‘Americanizing’ films on Indian or French culture.
29
In a peasant Egyptian marriage, the Americanization of femininity, celebration,
happiness, prestige and progress has been observed.
30
31 Globalisation and the World Revolution
1
26
Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002), pp. ix, 4–9.
1
27
See Norman Davies, Europe: A History (London: Pimlico, 1997), p. 774.
1
28
Santos, New Legal Common Sense, pp. 179–80.
1
29
Fredric, ‘Notes on Globalization’, pp. 58, 62.
1

ceived global–local duality.
34
Law manifests this complexity. The experience of imperialism from the West,
featuring the imposition of Western legal systems on the new colonies, is a
manifestation of ‘globalized localism’. For example, state law as an emanation
of Western imperialism has an almost ‘alien presence’ in Micronesia.
35
Ye t
colonialism – the response of a local community to imperialism, has resulted
in peculiar local responses in local legal systems to more universally imposed
rules – that is, ‘localized globalism’. For example, a unique jurisprudence devel-
oped in early colonial New South Wales.
36
Such processes have been and are
uneven in most jurisdictions.
37
32 Towards a Globalist Jurisprudence
1
31
Santos, New Legal Common Sense, pp. 458–61.
1
32
See e.g. William Twining, Globalisation and Legal Theory (London: Butterworths, 2000),
p. 222. International legal concepts characteristic of globalisation can be used in counter-
hegemonic ways: José Manuel Pureza, ‘Defensive and Oppositional Counter-Hegemonic
Uses of International Law: From the International Criminal Court to the Common Heritage
of Mankind’ in Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito (eds.), Law and Globalization from Below:
Toward a Cosmopolitan Legality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
1
33

39
The concept of cosmopolitanism has, though,
received much criticism from the left. It has been associated with ‘overcom[ing]
the limits of national sovereignty by constructing a global order that will govern
important political as well as economic aspects of both the internal and exter-
nal behaviour of states’.
40
It is associated with capitalist market forces, and
American hegemony and hypocrisy. This would appear to be just one reading
of the idea of cosmopolitanism – and a narrow one at that. The heritage of
cosmopolitanism has a far richer lineage dating back to ancient times, when
Diogenes proclaimed himself ‘a citizen of the world’, amplified later by
Immanuel Kant in his pioneering enquiry into the conditions for a continuing
world peace. It is not apparent that the Greek Stoics wished to establish a single
world state; they did, however, insist on the individual human’s standing in
the world being viewed as ‘fundamentally and deeply linked to humankind as a
whole’.
41
This elucidates the core sense of cosmopolitanism: the notion of a
world civil society, or a world society of interactive human beings, discussed
below in section 2.3.4.
The ‘common heritage of humankind’ is the second of Santos’s more hopeful
paradigmatic processes. Certain issues make sense by reference to the whole
globe, as truly global concerns. These include environmental issues such as
ozone layer depletion, opposition to weapons of mass destruction, together
with positive ventures such as the exploration of outer space. The concept of
33 Globalisation and the World Revolution
Processes (London: Butterworths, 2002); H. Patrick Glenn, On Common Laws (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), ch. 2; Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in
World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

isation is found to be a highly normative phenomenon reliant in large measure,
more so in developed countries, upon law. There, law maintains social stability
and order and facilitates technological progress in these times. Although imper-
fect, the generalisations employed above go a good way to creating some sort of
order from the chaos of globalisation (although lacking the beauty of one of
Mandelbrot’s fractal patterns). What does law contribute to, or reflect of, this
pattern?
2.2 Globalisation and legal categories
No contemporary doctrinal legal textbook is untouched by globalisation.
Whereas the first chapter of nearly every doctrinal textbook used to contain
discussion of the related legal history (mostly ignored by students), an add-
itional indirectly relevant chapter may now appear, discussing the interna-
tional and global implications and sources of the subject. If such a chapter does
not appear, the chances are that the global implications and sources are woven
into the main text, in the form of treaty references and decisions from foreign
jurisdictions. Books oriented towards practical legal training in areas such as
conveyancing or municipal court procedure are perhaps the exception. Even in
court procedure, in common law countries at least, there will be persuasive
comparative references to authorities from fellow Commonwealth courts, if
not direct references from times when ultimate appellate jurisdiction belonged
to England. Court rules will refer to service of legal process outside the juris-
diction and the treatment of claims in foreign currencies. Even the most
parochial conveyancing manual may contain references to domestic require-
ments for satisfying, for example in Australia, Foreign Investments Review
Board regulations concerning the intrusion of foreign ownership capital into
the jurisdiction. Understanding such intrusion requires identifying how the
intruder is sifted through universal and particular laws into a category of
person with imposed legal attributes, according to the authority underlying
the status quo. The surface view is exposed in the next section, deferring
34 Towards a Globalist Jurisprudence