Ugo Mattei

THE EVIL TECHNOLOGY HYPOTHESIS: A DEEP ECOLOGICAL READING OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

Ugo Mattei et al. — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:08:13 PDT

Comparative International Law

Ugo Mattei et al. — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:59:30 PDT

The State, the Market, and some Preliminary Question about the Commons (French and English Version)

Ugo Mattei — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:00:57 PDT

The economic crisis is showing the decline of western world-wide hegemony - Portuguese translation -

Ugo Mattei — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:39:58 PDT

O Ocidente está em recessão, o que significa estagnação e a interrupção do crescimento. Por si só, poderia se tratar de uma simples interrupção cíclica, e boa parte dos meios de comunicação “oficiais” procuram veicular essa idéia. Um, dois anos de “vacas magras”, um novo “Bretton Woods”, como se costuma dizer agora, e o modelo capitalista, fundado na democracia-liberal, voltará a ser o melhor sistema possível. Segundo outros observadores, poderemos, pelo contrário, nos encontrar frente a um colapso sistêmico, semelhante ao que sacudiu o modelo soviético. Ambas as perspectivas são compatíveis com o fato de que a liderança do Ocidente se perdeu e que o G8 é apenas uma feia lembrança (não se sabe se se esperará por um G20 ou um G14).

La larga marcha del topo neoliberal y la ideología del reformismo

Ugo Mattei — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:23:08 PDT

El reformismo se ha convertido en palabra clave de una nueva ideología que predica el evangelio del crecimiento económico mientras el populismo recita el mantra de la seguridad y de un renovado proteccionismo de base supranacional de las comunidades locales. El ejemplo más significativo de mitigación de los efectos del libre mercado en el mundo son los proyectos de la Fundación de Melinda y Bill Gates. O la propuesta de una tercera vía que supere la distinción entre izquierda y derecha.

Schlesinger's Comparative Law, 7th

Ugo Mattei et al. — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:18:59 PDT

This book enlarges the perspective of comparative law to include the experiences of the non-Western world, which increasingly occupies the center stage in a global approach to the law. Accordingly, the book incorporates diverse legal materials from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In addition, it includes a greatly enhanced methodological discussion that brings the book up-to-date with the latest debates in the field.

Emergency-Based Predatory Capitalism: The Rule of Law, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Development

Ugo Mattei — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 05:10:11 PDT

In a state of emergency, ordinary political life is suspended. To exit from a state of emergency by curing its causes or addressing its consequences is the “target” constructed as being in the interest of everybody and as the end that everybody must pursue. In a state of emergency, no critique is acceptable, and there is no place for a loyal opposition. Everybody must be on board in pursuit of the target. The state of emergency thus is a desirable condition for power. It is a highly effective way to avoid opposition—perhaps the only effective way in a pluralist political scenario such as a parliamentary democracy or the unstructured global political arena. Thus, the state of emergency is a stabilizing political strategy, a true foundation of “predatory capitalism,” which is how I define the realized form of the current system of global production. In turn, predatory capitalism requires and develops ideological apparatuses to sustain it. A state of emergency thus serves as false consciousness. A thick ideological layer constructs as in the interest of everybody what is in fact a project of domination of the powerful few over the powerless many. In this project, the law serves a double purpose as at the same time a coercive and an ideological apparatus of domination—a stick and a carrot. This essay explores current global developments in which general states of emergency are “invented” or “exaggerated” to sustain legal transformations that, while presented as being in the interest of everybody, cover projects of domination. From the perspective of the law, we will discuss three instances.

GLOBAL LAW & PLUNDER: THE DARK SIDE OF THE RULE OF LAW

Ugo Mattei et al. — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 05:04:41 PDT

The increasing expansion of international markets and the contextual decreasing role of states1 in the law-making process have made everyone aware of the existence and increasing importance of a ‘global law’. Within the current global scenario, the state, to whose authority the main sources of law would traditionally be traced back, has been challenged both from the ‘top-down’ by global law and from the ‘bottom-up’ by the local dimension, being confined to a relatively marginal role. What we can identify as ‘global law’ is not a single and coherent system of law drawing legitimacy from a well-defined legal and political process. Rather, a mixture of international and transnational instruments and processes—non-democratic institutional settings, power/force relationships and ethnocentric intellectual attitudes—stand behind the legal rules that are adopted by public and private actors at the global and (consequently)2 at the local level. This is not a new phenomenon, although its magnitude has recently been increasing. Within this framework, Western law has constantly enjoyed a dominant position during the past centuries and today, thus being in the position to shape and bend the evolution of other legal systems worldwide. During the colonial era, continental-European powers have systematically exported their own legal systems to the colonized lands. During the past decades and today, the United States have been dominating the international arena as the most powerful economic power, exporting their own legal system to the ‘periphery’, both by itself and through a set of international institutions, behaving as a neo-colonialist within the ideology known as neoliberalism. Western countries identify themselves as law-abiding and civilized no matter what their actual history reveals. Such identification is acquired by false knowledge and false comparison with other peoples, those who were said to ‘lack’ the rule of law, such as China, Japan, India, and the Islamic world more generally. In a similar fashion today, according to some leading economists, Third World developing countries ‘lack’ the minimal institutional systems necessary for the unfolding of a market economy. The theory of ‘lack’ and the rhetoric of the rule of law have justified aggressive interventions from Western countries into non-Western ones. The policy of corporatization and open markets, supported today globally by the so-called Washington consensus3, was used by Western bankers and the business community in Latin America as the main vehicle to ‘open the veins’ of the continent—to borrow Eduardo Galeano’s metaphor4—with no solution of continuity between colonial and post-colonial times. Similar policy was used in Africa to facilitate the forced transfer of slaves to America, and today to facilitate the extraction of agricultural products, oil, minerals, ideas and cultural artefacts in the same countries. The policy of opening markets for free trade, used today in Afghanistan and Iraq, was used in China during the nineteenth century Opium War, in which free trade was interpreted as an obligation to buy drugs from British dealers. The policy of forcing local industries to compete on open markets was used by the British empire in Bengal, as it is today by the WTO in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Access to Justice. A Renewed Global Issue.

Ugo Mattei — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:35:02 PST

"NO EXISTE MIXTERIO DEL CAPITAL ALGUNO" - THEMIS 49 Revista de Derecho

Ugo Mattei — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:31:58 PST

Comparative Law and Critical Legal Studies

Ugo Mattei — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:22:03 PST

The European Codification Process: Cut and Paste

Ugo Mattei — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:54:20 PDT

Comparative Law and Economics

Ugo Mattei — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:31:45 PDT

The comparative study of law and the institutions of law have enriched our understanding of the role law plays in our society by comparing law and legal institutions in different countries, but we have lacked a strong theoretical structure. Scholars studying the role of law in society by applying economic theories have offered a parsimonious theoretical structure with which to understand the relationship between law and society but have tended to focus only on American legal issues. Ugo Mattei joins insights from both areas of scholarship in a productive relationship that furthers our understanding of why societies adopt different laws and why some societies share similar laws.

Mattei shows how concepts from economics can be applied to the study of comparative law. He then applies the concepts to several significant problems in comparative law, including the history and sources of law, differences between civil and common law systems, and the reasons for legal change and the movement of law from one country to another. He looks at specific problems in property, contracts, and trust law. Finally he uses the insights he has developed to understand the issues involved in changing law in developing countries and in formerly socialist countries.

This book will be of interest to scholars of law, economics, and development, as well as those interested in transformation in formerly communist states.

Basic Principles of Property Law

Ugo Mattei — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:18:12 PDT

The first attempt to address comparative property law in a common integrative framework, this study discusses German, Italian, French, American, and British property law as mere variations based upon a few fundamental themes through which these nations developed legal systems to provide responses to common economic problems and to set legal foundations for working markets. Basic Principles of Property Law was produced to offer a common framework for the discussion of the law of property within countries in transition, thus it has its basis, not on just one legal system, but on the institutional commonalties that make western property law a working market institution. It offers a major challenge to conventional thinking that in property law the differences between common law and civil law are so important that "common core" research is impossible. Mattei hopes to guide the reader to think comparatively about property by shedding many preconceived formalistic abstractions. The substance of property law, he argues, is much more common throughout the Western legal tradition than legal scholars would have us believe. Through a set format and accessible writing, this book looks at national legal traditions as responses to common economic problems. It sets the foundations for further much needed integrative comparative legal research in the domain of property law.

Plunder: when the Rule of Law is Illegal

Ugo Mattei et al. — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:33:01 PDT

"Plunder" examines the dark side of the Rule of Law and explores how it has been used 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.

* 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?

The Rise and Fall of Law and Economics: an Essay for Judge Guido Calabresi

Ugo Mattei — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:47:22 PST

Some Realism about Comparativism: Comparative Law Teaching in the Hegemonic Jurisdiction

Ugo Mattei — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:44:47 PST

The Art and Science of Critical Scholarship: Postmodernism and International Style in The Legal Architecture of Europe

Ugo Mattei et al. — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:40:52 PST

Efficiency and Equal Protection in The New European Contract Law: Mandatory, Default and Enforcement Rules

Ugo Mattei — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:37:43 PST

The Issue of European Civil Codification and Legal Scholarship: Biases, Strategies and Developments

Ugo Mattei — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:32:29 PST