The Myopia of the Handmaidens: International Lawyers and Globalization VII. Conclusion From a range of significantly different diagnoses, it is possible to draw several conclusions that seem to follow from all of them. In the first place international lawyers cannot be expected to respond uniformly to the implications of globalization. They can, however, be urged to devote more explicit attention to the process and its consequences and to explore more systematically the implications for international norms, institutions and processes that follow therefrom. If many of the trends and processes described above are accurate, much of the mainstream of international law scholarship would seem to be close to the point at which the normative and institutional jigsaw puzzles that it is painstakingly trying to piece together are little more than exercises in nostalgia. One is reminded of a current advertisement for the Inter-Continental Hotel chain depicting a multiracial group of business people in discussion at the relevant hotel in Washington DC. The caption is: `While everyone was debating the idea of the Global Village, we were building it'. The equivalent advertisement for today's international law might be: `While non-state actors were building the Global Village, we were busy with yesterday's issues and concepts'. Secondly, the values either implicit or explicit in the new order that is emerging need to be examined more systematically. International law is a value system, not merely a means of achieving predictable outcomes. Those values include the promotion of a corpus of human rights predicated upon a broad conception of human dignity. Yet the great majority of international lawyers seem content to compartmentalize those values within a small part of the overall discipline and assess the performance of the remainder of the system/framework by reference to values which are often quite separate and sometimes clearly antagonistic to those values. This is not a call for the analyses of specialists in every field of international law to be developed within a human rights framework, but there is a middle course which recognizes the interrelatedness of different parts of the international normative framework. Thirdly, insufficient attention has been paid to the questions of the nature of the international agenda and who sets and implements it. Whether one accepts the approach of Reisman, Sur or Slaughter, there is an urgent need to re-evaluate the extent to which the emerging shape of the international system reflects the principles of transparency, participation and accountability that are being so strongly promoted in the names of democracy and good governance in relation to domestic processes. This is not to suggest a return to the somewhat artificial and unsustainable notions of democratic decision-making reflected in many of the New International Economic Order-era proposals. But if the trends described by these authors, and particularly Sur and Slaughter, are accurate reflections of reality, the premises upon which many international organizations are operating, as well as parts of the normative framework, are sadly obsolete and fictional. Fourthly, the contraction of the `real' international agenda, and the marginalization or exclusion of a significant range of issues, is a development that needs to be reversed. Equity and fairness, both in real and perceived terms, will remain central to a viable international legal order. Many aspects seem however to have been jettisoned by current developments and too little has been said by the community of international lawyers as a whole. Finally, there is an urgent need to revisit the distinction that is reflected in international law between the public and private domains. The public/private distinction is more appropriately seen not as a single divide but as a series of often rather inconsistent cleavages in different areas.41 The role of the Shell Oil Company in Nigeria, the fall of the Government of Papua New Guinea when it sought to contract out the resolution of the Bougainville `problem' to a firm of South-African-based mercenaries with the delightful name of Sandline International, and the role of private American financiers in the `de-Arabization' of Jerusalem, all raise questions as to whether existing doctrines and institutional arrangements are adequate to deal with the complexities and realities of a globalized world. 41 For an excellent set of analyses of the impact of globalization upon the field of administrative law, at least within Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions, see M. Taggart (ed.), The Province of Administrative Law (1997).
	© 1990-2004 European Journal of International Law All comments and suggestions should be sent to webmaster This site is part of the Academy of European Law online, a joint partnership of the Jean Monnet Center at NYU School of Law and the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute. This file was last modified: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 12:38PM