Inside and Outside Global Law

Julius Stone Address

Abstract

Protracted and bitter resistance by alter-globalisation and anti-globalisation movements around the world shows that the globalisation of law transpires as the globalisation of inclusion and exclusion. Humanity is inside and outside global law in all its possible manifestations. How is this possible? Conceptually: how must legal orders be structured such that, even if we can now speak of law beyond State borders, no emergent global legal order is possible that can include without excluding? Normatively: is an authoritative politics of boundaries possible, which neither postulates the possibility of realising an all-inclusive global legal order nor accepts resignation or paralysis in the face of the globalisation of inclusion and exclusion? In the spirit of Julius Stone’s approach to jurisprudence, addressing these urgent questions demands integrating doctrinal, sociological, and philosophical perspectives and insights concerning the law.