Center on Law and Globalization

In October, 2007, the Board of Visitors of the University of Illinois College of Law and the American Bar Foundation Board of Directors jointly announced the creation of the Center on Law and Globalization. Last month, the Center on Law and Globalization launched a remarkable interactive website at www.lexglobal.org housing an international forum for high level exchanges between global law-makers, scholarly analysts and journalists, exercise international leadership on empirical research on globalization and law, and serving as a conduit of high-quality research to worldwide leaders and opinion makers.

How do I find the Center on Law and Globalization? -- Located at www.lexglobal.org, the Center on Law and Globalization website went live at the beginning of October 2008. Featuring an introductory Smart Library on Globalization, this resource touches on perspectives on law and globalization, sites and types of global lawmaking, and the global spread of law. Other features of what is expected to become a key information site for scholars, policy-makers, and journalists, include headlines from around the world on law and globalization, surveys, and bibliographic material on connected subjects. www.lexglobal.org will also support the Center's colloquium program by making available working papers, findings, and related materials.

What is the Center? -- The mission and purpose of the Center is to identify and provide understanding of situations and problems within the international legal environment, utilizing existing research and providing new research data, and offering proposed courses of action, future projections, and potential solutions. The focus of the Center is in the area of international human and legal rights issues, including justice and security, the international economy and marketplace, and health issues. The goal of the Center is to help international legal agencies, such as UNCITRAL, Hague Courts, United Nations, and the International Monetary Fund to advance the research and scholarly frames available to global leaders, to enable national legal professions to catch of vision of the contributions they can make to advance political liberalism, and to help global and local leaders worldwide better understand the constraints, ideologies, and difficulties of advancing global agendas in a world of nation-states. In summary, the Center on Law and Globalization seeks to help world leaders, journalists, and legal scholars understand what the issues are, how people are addressing these situations, and provide research and conclusions on specific topics. Based on the background research and thorough examination of each situation, the Center can assist in identifying specific problems and provide concrete recommendations to better society and help global leaders advance the proper use of law and justice in a variety of international situations.

SmartLibrary: An easy source for information -- To open public debate on global issues to a wide global audience, the Center is pleased to introduce an interactive website, providing easy access to ground-breaking research on its principal issues through its unique SmartLibrary where the best research has been transformed into easily accessible executive summaries. The website offers a rich range of research and teaching materials for all specialists in higher education, international organizations and international journalism.

Conferences and Forums -- The Center will host international research projects, international conferences based in Chicago on topics such as Law and Economic Development, Genocide, Global Norm-making, Basic Legal Freedoms, and AIDS, produce print and web-based publications and focus specifically on the globalization and law of human rights and security, markets, and health.

Leadership -- The Center is directed by Professor Ralph Brubaker, Interim Dean, University of Illinois College of Law; Professor Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago College of Law and Visiting Professor, University of Illinois College of Law; John Hagan, American Bar Foundation and Northwestern University; Terence Halliday, American Bar Foundation; and, Charlotte Ku, Assistant Dean for Graduate and International Programs, University of Illinois College of Law.

Contact us -- For more information about the Center's work, contact Dr. Charlotte Ku, Assistant Dean for Graduate and International Legal Studies and Co-Director, Center on Law and Globalization at chku@law.illinois.edu.