The Triumph (?) of Western Law: A Contemporary Perspective

Abstract

For nearly a millennium, private law was primary in the West. By the mid-twentieth century, Western private law had become virtually universal—an apparent triumph of Western influence. By then, however, regulatory and criminal law, core features of law in the world’s largest and oldest nation-state—China—had replaced private law at least in the volume of rules and cases. Has Western law triumphed after all? Or has, instead, the world of law in the twenty-first century more appropriately viewed as the ultimate “triumph” of the world’s oldest and most enduring legal tradition? If so, perhaps, the West has something to learn from the East, particularly the success of the contemporary Japanese criminal justice system in its avoidance incarceration and other retributive sanctions by distinguishing condemnation of the crime with correction and reintegration of the criminal.