Two Paradigms of Jurisdiction

Globalization causes convergence of legal orders. Or so it is argued. Law and economics scholars predict that legal orders will move towards the same efficient end state. They argue that the requirements of globalization will pressure legal orders to converge on the level of economic efficiency, because regulatory competition between legal orders makes it impossible for individual legal systems to maintain suboptimal solutions. Many comparative lawyers predict a similar convergence. In particular traditional functionalist comparatists have long held that unification of law was both desirable and unavoidable. Their basic argument is based on functional equivalence and can be summarized as follows: legal systems may look different because they have different doctrines and institutions; these differences, however, are only superficial, because the institutions fulfill the same functions and are therefore actually similar. Realizing that legal orders are already similar in substance should make it easy to unify the law formally as well.