Kaleidoscope

• Scott, Shirley V.

Abstract

This article responds to a paper by Philip Alston published in a recent issue of this Journal. Alston gently chided international lawyers for not having paid greater attention to the possible impacts on international law of globalization. The timeliness of the wake-up call would be hard to dispute, but Alston's discussion of globalization serves to highlight the difficulty international lawyers face in assessing contemporary political developments given the inadequacy of dominant frameworks within which to understand how international law relates to the political and economic context in which it operates. International lawyers will need to be able to enunciate just what part international law has played in the globalization process as it has taken place to date before they can play a meaningful role in policy debates regarding the future of globalization.