BC Law IPTF Blog

In researching a paper/presentation for my comparative law class, I ran across a journal article that compares development of rule of law in post-conflict situations to those in online, virtual worlds:

Jonathan E. Hendrix, Law Without State: The Collapsed State Challenge to Traditional International Enforcement, 24 Wis. Int’l L. J. 587 (2006).

The article, in part, compares the situation in Somalia to that in virtual worlds. In a largely unmanageable legal system, economies and polity flourish, but are unregulated from a “top-down” sense. The individual actors within the chaotic state set the stage for what rule of law needs to be developed.

Hendrix then posits that this creates a situation where international law can step in and set the foundation for domestic law and policies, in the vacuum of the latter.

I plan to use this to support my hypothesis that rule of law cannot completely supersede the “will of economy”–that rule of law reform in post-conflict situations should be more “thumbs in the dam” than brutally building a brand-new dam. Rule of law reform should fix things that need to be fixed rather than prospectively apply carte blanche “developed” legal systems on top of effectively disparate legal and cultural systems.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 2:11 am and is filed under Virtual Life, International, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.