How Internationalization of the Law Has Materialized in Canada‪.‬

The current financial crisis is evidence that no country, not even a superpower like the United States, can resolve on its own the modern challenges posed by a deregulated banking system, the ecological imbalance, terrorism, international crime or world trade impacts. Internationalization is a reality that has, of course, applied to the law for a long time. We need a reasonably efficacious system to accommodate trading among nations; laws on shipping and bills of exchange, for instance, are meant to ensure respect for the principles of unity and continuity in the law. These principles extend far beyond the need to secure international trade. Indeed, section I of the Canadian Charter of Rights anal Freedoms speaks of restrictions on fundamental rights that are justifiable in a free and democratic society; a reference to shared values and principles. At the first level, we can identify the universal values of human dignity, equality, democracy, and at the second level the requirements of a common methodology based on the application of the rules of proportionality by an independent judiciary. We have obviously moved from a rather closed society to one of openness; this phenomenon being described as one of globalization. Justice Albie Sachs of South Africa questions this choice of words because globalization suggests that there is a centre imposing on others its technology, language, values. Universalization is a better choice, in his view, because it suggests that in a global struggle for freedom and fairness we recognize the equality of participants. I agree that what we now mean by globalization of the law is essentially access to all sources of law, national and international, and the circulation of norms and models. It is not, in my opinion, the search for supranational law as in the European Community.