History


The World Law Institute was founded in 1997 through the generous support of Thomas J. Murray, Esq., of Sandusky, Ohio, as a not-for-profit corporation. Chairman David Link, formerly Dean of Notre Dame Law School, and Co-Chairman Harold Berman gathered together a group of approximately half-a-dozen outstanding scholars to teach courses in world law for practicing lawyers and for post-graduate law students, drawn from various law faculties in the United States and Europe. They also initiated the construction of a state-of-the-art maternity clinic in Russia, financed initially by Mr. Murray.

The purpose of the WLI (now transferred to Emory University) is to develop, teach and promote an understanding of world law, which includes aspects of traditional public international law but also emphasizes customary legal relationships established at the initiative of voluntary enterprises and associations of persons engaged in transnational activities. The study of world law also differs from traditional courses and writings in comparative law by its emphasis on the common features of the world's legal systems as contrasted with the differences among them. Thus world law includes various aspects of so-called private law governing the world economy such as world mercantile law governing the transnational transfer of goods, world financial law governing transnational money transactions, and the world law of direct investment governing the transnational transfer of plant and equipment.

World law also includes the transnational law of universal crimes such as genocide, terrorism, and torture, world environmental law, world health law, and (not least of all) the world law of sports. A study of the practice of multinational law firms is also an important part of the study of world law. Emphasis throughout is on the role of voluntary transnational enterprises and associations, including their interaction with governmental and intergovernmental agencies, in creating world law. The term "world law" is used rather than the term "global law" since it implies not only a spatial dimension, a globe, but also a social dimension, people, an emerging world society.