Globalization, Urbanization, and the Law - Research Paper Example

Due to the increasing trends of globalization and urbanization, the need to create homogenous laws that facilitate the interactions of people and nations in trade and other socio-economic activities has emerged over time. Consequently, some countries have adopted similar policies and laws in a bid to facilitate trade and other socioeconomic interactions. However, some believe that laws revolving around globalization and urbanization to some extent erode the sovereignty of nations by minimizing the power of the member states to determine the development of the law.

Globalization of law is comparatively a new phenomenon in global law and legal systems. Despite the fact that global economic integration can be argued to have existed for a long period, the globalization of the world’s legal systems is a recent trend in this area. There is a thick difference between the internationalization of law which has existed for a couple of years and the globalization of law. Recent studies by Osinky & Halliday document that the presence of non-state actors and governmental legal bodies has substantially minimized the sovereignty of nation-states more radically than the application of international law.

While international law is founded on the sovereignty of nation-states ideology, the development of globalization of law is gradually eroding that sovereignty by minimizing or eliminating the influence of nation-states' development of the law as noted by Bhagwati. Research documents that there is a trend in the globalization of the law. Globalization of law and international law differ in how each describes that development and how each understands it. Thus, the central argument focuses on the degree to which the interaction between private and public forces is mediating legal philosophy and legal conduct.

The concept of the globalization of law is drawn from business and trade globalization. In the observations made by Reitz, the world has witnessed a rise in the magnitude of international law, the application of comparative analysis, the development of inter-governmental legal bodies, and the growth of private international laws in the past two decades.