Internationalizing legal systems

The internationalization of the Japanese legal system has even further to go. Foreign lawyers may be employed in Japanese law companies, but they are not allowed to work on cases that involve Japanese laws, or to run law firms in partnership with Japanese lawyers. It seems there is nothing to stop them from taking the Japanese law examinations, but these are almost impossible to pass for anyone who is not a native speaker of Japanese.

Continuing differences among legal systems seem to be a major barrier to the internationalization of the legal profession. Nevertheless such barriers are breaking down. International business requires contracts that are internationally valid and lawyers who can argue cases in the courts of different countries. The number of international tort cases is increasing. For example in 1981, workers injured in an American-owned Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, took their case to the United States. When political circumstances allow, individuals take legal action to force their government to obey international agreements, and every year such agreements increase. The 1990s have seen old states disappear (for example, the Soviet Union) and new ones appear (Slovenia). At the same time, civil wars, refugee crises and environmental disasters are demonstrating the need for more laws across frontiers.

Since the UN is not a world government but a conference of the world's existing national governments, the limitations of international law become clear whenever there is a dispute between a nation and an ethnic group within its borders. Without a national government, the Tibetans (ruled by China and the Kurds (spread across Iraq, Turkey and Syria) face enormous difficulties in publicizing their social and economic problems. However, the increasing tendency of states in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to fragment into ethnic factions suggests that there will never be enough nations to represent all the citizens of the world. The concept of world citizens directly electing a world government still seems remote.

While movement toward an international government continues to be slow, international law is developing rapidly in the form of limited practical agreements to facilitate trade and protect the environment. More and more people are affected by activities in areas that are not under the exclusive control of any one nation. Pilots and air traffic controllers work within guidelines laid down by the 1944 Chicago Convention, when traffic was only a fraction of its present volume. Homeowners can turn to the 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects when space debris falls on their property (as happened to Canadians in 1979). Even Antarctica and outer space are subject to several pieces of legislation to prevent them becoming as dirty and dangerous as the rest of the world.

As fast as international law grows, it is not fast enough. Conventions on Environmental Protection in Geneva (1979), Vienna (1985) and Rio (1992) have managed to emphasize not only the seriousness of the problems but the political and economic difficulties of doing anything about them. The 1982 Law of the Sea builds upon some of the oldest international law in the world, covering such matters as rights of passage through straits, deep-sea mining, and the rights of landlocked states, piracy and collisions. But the number of disputes, hijackings and accidents gets more, not less. The future of law, the "necessary' evil," seems to be one of inevitable expansion.

(taken from http://www.just-english.ru/diplo_and_law.htm)