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Ghosts, Machines, and Asian Law: Some Comments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2014

Lawrence M. Friedman
Lawrence M. Friedman*
Affiliation:
Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor, Stanford Law School, Stanford, California, USA
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Abstract

This paper asks how globalization relates to legal culture. It argues that there exists, at least in the developed world, a general global culture; it follows, then, that there must be a global legal culture as well. Not everyone in modern societies is completely drawn into the global legal culture, however, as the research of the David and Jaruwan Engel in Thailand suggests. In general, however, the legal cultures of modern, developed societies are strongly convergent. In particular, there is emerging a global and convergent culture of human rights. Some Asian scholars and political figures have argued that conceptions of fundamental human rights are culturally Western, and may not suit the cultures of the East. The paper argues, however, that the human rights culture is not “Western” so much as modern; it arose in the West, but it is no more unsuitable to Asian societies than the automobile and the computer, which also arose first in the West.

Keywords

legal culturelegal consciousnessconvergencehuman rightsglobalizationmodernity
Type
Comparative and Empirical Approaches of Socio–Legal Research on Asia
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 5 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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