Globalization and legal change: The Americanization of European law?

• 成果类型: Review
• 署名作者: Kagan, Robert A.
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: REGULATION & GOVERNANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1748-5983
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-5991.2007.00009.x
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 99-120
• 关键词: LITIGATION; COURTS; matter

摘要

Intensified global economic competition, economic liberalization, and the rise of EU governance have led some observers to argue that there has been a trend toward the Americanization'' of the European way of law.'' This article addresses that contention, focusing on legal change in European member states. It first describes ways in which the American legal tradition has differed most sharply from the national legal systems of Western Europe (including Great Britain) and the political and economic factors that account for this American legal distinctiveness.'' Similar political and economic factors currently are at work in Europe, the article acknowledges, creating incentives for legal convergence. But it also argues that European legal culture and the political organization of European national states generate path-dependent forces that impede European movement toward American ways of law, and it discusses six important differences between European and American law that remain entrenched and are unlikely to disappear.