In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Conclusion DONALD W. JACKSON, MICHAEL C. TOLLEY, AND MARY L.VOLCANSEK What have these fourteen chapters written by sixteen different hands added to our knowledge about the globalization of law? Though globalization as “the process of increasing interconnectivity and interdependence among nationstates ” is treated as a relatively new and novel phenomenon,1 the process in legal circles, as David O’Brien reminds us in the first chapter, can be traced at least to 1815, when Chief Justice John Marshall nodded toward foreign legal norms as aids in judicial decision making. Perhaps, though, recent developments including transnational judicial institutions and treaties such as the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT), the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Court of Justice (ICJ), International Criminal Court (ICC), International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), and invocations of universal jurisdiction in matters such as crimes against humanity are accelerating the process. Globalization takes various forms, but this volume emphasizes its effects on law, politics, trade, commerce, and society. In many ways, the case of Medellin v.Texas,2 decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, serves as an apt metaphor for the dilemmas of a system of global justice. In this case, José Ernesto Medellin, a foreign national from Mexico, was charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of two teenage girls before he was told of his right to consular access.Article 36 of theVienna Convention on Consular Relations, adopted in 1963 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1969, provides that foreign nationals who are detained by a signatory of the treaty must be told of their right to contact their nation’s embassy. The State of Texas failed to notify Medellin and fifty other Mexican nationals of this right, and Mexico filed suit over the situation in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), winning in 2004. 267 268 GLOBALIZING JUSTICE The court ruled that the United States government had a duty to review and reconsider the foreign nationals’ convictions and sentences. President George W. Bush directed the Texas courts to comply with the ruling, but the reluctance of the Texas courts to do so resulted in a lawsuit that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In a six-to-three decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Texas courts did not have a duty to give a new hearing to Medellin and the others , despite the decision of the ICJ, the Vienna Convention, and the entreaty from President Bush. Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that the Vienna Convention was not “self-executing” and thus required congressional action to make the treaty enforceable in U.S. courts. Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and David Souter dissented, with Justice Breyer lamenting the likely implications of the majority’s decision in “a world where commerce, trade and travel have become ever more international.”3 The roles played by politics, law, and international affairs, along with the efficacy of international human rights and humanitarian law, in the face of domestic resistance all met in José Ernesto Medellin’s case. Many questions implicated in the tapestry of the Medellin case were confronted in this book: how effective are international treaties and obligations in domestic politics and policy making; what are the implications of claims of universal jurisdiction ; are prophecies of the demise of the notion of Westphalian sovereignty and the nation-state premature; and are hegemonic powers insulated from the reach of international norms? Few complain that globalization has wrought the spread of ideas about the desirability of good governance, due process or—more broadly—the rule of law, judicial independence, liberal democracy, and the increasing prominence of human rights and political freedom in countries around the world. But what if globalization and its concomitant weakening of the nation-state also hampered the ability of the nation-state to respond to domestic problems caused by globalization? Clearly, as Hans Peter Schmitz wrote in chapter 7, there is a domestic bias in how we look at human rights and democratic change in light of real-world events. The Medellin case also illustrates how domestic politics, in this case the continuation of the death penalty in the United States, can run counter to world opinion. Execution has, according to Schmitz, been outlawed by the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and 129 nations have signed...

Share