Global Jurist

Global Jurist News

The IUC Prize 2008

The International University College of Turin Prize, 2008 Edition (IUC Prize 2008) aims at encouraging submissions of papers to Global Jurist from scholars teaching and doing research in the African, Asian, and Latin American academic settings or in any other country which is ranked 28 or lower in the Human Development Report 2006.

Papers should be original and shed critical light on current developments of global capitalism. In particular we encourage interdisciplinary approaches broadly speaking belonging to “law and economics”, “law and finance”, “law and society”, “law and anthropology”, the law and practice of international relations, and the law of international financial institutions, along the aims and scope of Global Jurist and of IUC.

• Papers can be written in English, French or Spanish.
• Papers will be selected by a committee of members of the Global Jurist Editorial Board
• Papers should be submitted by March 15 2009 and the decision will be publicly notified by May 30 2009 on the Global Jurist homepage. Authors should not wait for the deadline to submit. Participating papers might be accepted and published in Global Jurist before the award of the Prize.
• Please follow the ordinary submission procedure simply mentioning your desire to participate in the Prize competition.
• The IUC Gold Medal is in the form of a check of Euros 1500.
  The IUC Silver Medal is in the form of a check of Euros 1000.
  The IUC Bronze Medal is in the form of a check of Euros 500.
• Winning authors will be mentioned on the Global Jurist homepage and on the International University College website.

Click here for instructions in French.

Click here for instructions in Spanish.

Announcing the 2007 Global Jurist Award Winners

Global Jurist is pleased to announce the winners of the 2007 Global Jurist Medals. These medals are awarded to the best submissions from scholars in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond. Our editorial board has selected and will publish the following papers that we feel provide the most valuable critical and innovative perspective on global capitalism.

The articles considered for the prize were related to:

• Law and Economics
• Law and Finance
• Law and Society
• Law and Anthropology
• Law and International Relations
• The Law of International Financial Institutions

The Medals are sponsored by the International University College of Turin (IUC), a new academic institution preparing an international class of lawyers and finance experts, endowed with a highly integrated background in Law, Economics and Finance.

IUC shares many of the aims of Global Jurist, in particular the idea that legal issues should be discussed outside of the narrow limits imposed by positivism, parochialism, ethnocentrism, imperialism, and chauvinism in the law, in order to develop a truly international community of legal scholars. Accordingly, a thorough and critical knowledge of institutional context is a key factor for any comparative or transnational endeavour.

These aims are reflected in the IUC’s two year program in Comparative Law Economics and Finance, open to students coming from all over the world that have completed three years of academic education and are proficient in English. We encourage you to visit the IUC website for further information. In line with its aims, IUC began this collaboration with Global Jurist to award those scholars providing the most original contribution concerning current developments in global capitalism.

We are also proud to announce that due to the great success of the first edition, we are currently organizing the second edition of the Global Jurist Medals. Further information will follow when competition will open again.

With all our best regards,
Ugo Mattei and Alberto Monti

New Book by the Editor of Global Jurist

Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal, Wiley Blackwell, 2008
By Ugo Mattei (Professor of Law, U.C. Hastings) and Laura Nader (Professor of Anthropology, U.C. Berkeley)

This book is an essential read for anyone interested in the deep institutional causes of the current fiasco of financial capitalism. It is a theoretical multi-disciplinary systematization of much of the data offered by Global Jurist. The book addresses for the first time the deep international and comparative roots of the global economic system and aims at a truly global understanding of the broad picture. Since its publication Plunder has already been presented at law schools and anthropological departments at Berkeley, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Hastings, Al Quds, Bangalore, and New Dheli. It has been featured as a front page story of the leading Israeli financial periodical The Marker, included in a special program of the French Public Radio France Culture and at KPFA’s Morning Show, and has reached third place in Amazon.com best selling books on jurisprudence. Campus-wide lectures on Plunder are scheduled at the Central European University in Budapest (December 3), and at the London School of Economics (December 10). An online conversation of plunder can be found at http://www.redroom.com/author/ugo-mattei.

Plunder examines the dark side of the Rule of Law and explores how it is used, with tragic consequences, as a powerful political weapon by Western countries in order to legitimize plunder - the practice of violent extraction by stronger political actors victimizing weaker ones both domestically and internationally. Plunder:

• Challenges traditionally held beliefs in the sanctity of the Rule of Law by exposing its dark side
• Examines the Rule of Law's relationship with 'plunder' - the practice of violent extraction by stronger political actors victimizing weaker ones - in the service of Western cultural and economic domination
• Provides global examples of plunder: of oil in Iraq; of ideas in the form of Western patents and intellectual property rights imposed on weaker peoples; and of liberty in the United States
• Dares to ask the paradoxical question - is the Rule of Law itself illegal?

Reviews of the book highlight Professor Mattei's thoughtful and provocative exploration of the history of the Rule of Law as a tool serving Western Society's cultural and economic domination:

"Through a sweeping exploration of global processes from colonialism to neo-liberalism, Plunder offers an eye-opening look at the "dark side" of the rule of law. This powerful and disturbing analysis of the ways law has legitimated and facilitated the appropriation of knowledge and property challenges widespread views of the law."
Sally Engle Merry, New York University

"Plunder is the powerful product of interdisciplinary research that reveals how international law has become not an instrument of protecting the weak against the strong, but a means of legitimizing and enriching the powerful."
David H. Price, Saint Martin's University

"A lucid and implacable analysis of the crucial relationship between law and life in the age of global capitalism. A beam of harsh light on the murky area where the rule of law comes into contact with and is shaped by power, violence and abuse."
Aldo Schiavone, Istituto Studi Umanistici