In 1962, Henry J. Abraham wrote his first edition of the long-lived THE JUDICIAL PROCESS. Now in its seventh edition (1998), this book attempted to provide in a textbook a clear comparative examination of different judicial processes in disparate States--England and Wales, France, and the Soviet Union. Since that time, comparative law has become a much larger element of both legal scholarship and legal education. Many traditional texts on law and legal processes are being revised to include a clear comparative component. For example, Bloch and Krattenmaker's SUPREME COURT POLITICS (1994) is currently being revised to this end. In addition, we now see such texts, such as COMPARATIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS (Reichel 2001), which are solely designed for comparative use. All of these texts, however, and much of the comparative law research is based on comparing competing legal systems to the standard of United States' law and experience. Most seem to focus on systems and processes, while a growing scholarly literature is examining competing questions and priorities in the global arena. In other words, much of the current literature has been comparative as opposed to international in focus.

This text is a new and exciting contribution to an exploding subfield of the discipline. In 2000, the Law Library of Congress and the New York University (NYU) School of Law jointly sponsored a conference to celebrate the bicentennial of the Library of Congress and to further the objectives of the Global Law School Program at NYU. Both sponsors desired a forum in which the international issues crucial for the development of law into this next century could be explored. Directed by Norman Dorsen, the Chair of the Global Law School Program at the NYU School of Law, and Prosser Gifford, Director of Scholarly Programs at the Library of Congress, this conference was expanded beyond the typical constituency of United States' lawyers. Instead, it was made available through a cybercast, included invited speakers, and presented materials included in this book to a much wider global audience. As the editors note in their introduction, "We believed also that the time had come for courts in the United States to take greater cognizance of the treatment of similar issues by courts in other countries, so we decided to structure our discussions to be deliberately cross-cultural and comparative. Of the three people invited to prepare papers on each topic, only one would be an
American" (p. xiii).

The conference and this subsequent book were successful in meeting many of the goals of the sponsors-it was cross-cultural, international, and encompassed vastly diverse participants. This book reflects the perspectives of several members of the Supreme Court, including Chief

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Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sandra O'Connor, and Ruth Ginsburg. In addition to numerous U. S. academics, including a few social
scientists such as Jean Bethke Elshtain and Stanley N. Katz, and international legal scholars representing countries such as Japan, Italy, India, and Israel,
the authors wanted the voice of practitioners both in the United States and worldwide. So, additional perspectives are provided by the attorney general for
environmental protection in Mexico, a vice-chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a justice of Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, a former prime minister of India, a judge of the International Court of Justice, a member of the Supreme Court of Brazil, and a founder of Rukh--the popular movement for independence in the Ukraine. It is in the questions addressed by this volume and in the persons whose perspectives it reflects that this volume makes its greatest contribution.

The book is organized by the various sessions of the conference: "Transnational Justice and National Sovereignty," "Roles of Women: Norms and Culture," "Multiethnic and Multiracial States," "Plenary Sessions," "National Resources and the Environment: Individual Versus Community Interest," "Religion, Culture, and Governance," "Corporate Power, National Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in a Global Economy," and "The State and Human Rights." The scope of the questions addressed in the text is quite intriguing; in fact, the strength of this book is not only the established inquiries, but in the wide variety of answers the book encourages. It is in the interaction between the various participants-academic and practitioner, American and international-that this book makes its greatest contribution. However, it is this very blend of topic, perspective, and speaker that leaves the reader seeking clearer connections than those provided by the editors. Dorsen and
Gifford offer a general introduction to the deliberateness by which they planned the conference and descriptive introductions to each individual section. Unfortunately, they do not provide a concluding section that addresses their framing questions in light of the panelists' disparate responses.

There are three dominant themes providing interesting intersections throughout the text: the role of judicial review, the evolving question of legitimacy, and the nature of democracy in an era of globalization. Although only one plenary session directly connected the three essays by Thomas M. Franck, Daniel R. Fung, and Rosalyn Higgins, the relationships were demonstrated throughout the entire book. Judicial review was examined through the lens of both the United States and how this tradition could be translated into the political structures of other democratic systems, the question was frequently raised as to how effective such a dominant role for the judicial might be, especially in parliamentary structures. Legitimacy was generally explored in the questions of how to address the issue of international and
national responses to atrocities. How do we balance the role of state sovereignty with international accountability to human rights violations? This question seems clearly related to the role that states and their individualized versions of popular sovereignty have in an increasing global economy where nongovernmental organizations, international structures, and transnational corporations have an increasingly dominant role. Although the case studies and theoretical arguments in each area were intriguing and diverse, the unevenness of the panel discussants is disappointing. One of the clear messages of this book is the unusual role that the
United States plays among the both developing and developed democracies. One of the explicit goals of both this conference and this text was "the objective
of transforming legal education in the United States to take account of the remarkable changes occurring worldwide in communications, transportation, and
financial and financial and legal markets" (p. xiii). Many of the presenters, especially members of the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer's comments come to
mind, explicitly noted the importance of using the cases, experiences, and theories formed in other democracies to challenge and inform our own cases,
experiences, and theories. Yet unfortunately, very few authors, commentators, or discussants took this opportunity. Despite these goals of informing U. S.
law, most sessions made the American legal experience the touchstone of the analysis. For example, in the outstanding section on the roles of women, Azizah Y. al-Hibri's strong essay "Redefining Muslim Women's Roles in the Next Century" argues that American Muslim women are in the best position to help provide a new theoretical framework for gender in Islam. It is this "sponsoring" relationship that seems most dominant in this text.

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As many of us who have been sent by the State Department to emerging democracies around the world can attest, what the U. S. government seems to want is for us to share our democratic experiences and encourage other governments to adopt our systems. Yet as an academic, an exciting part of these trips is the chance to re-envision how WE think about democracy and to use other country's experiences to challenge our own theoretical frameworks and understandings. It is not until the last section of the book, for example Andras Sajo, in his presentation "Government Speech in a Neutral State," that we see an individual take the legal traditions in Germany, France and other countries to provide a new(ish) interpretation of the free speech elements of the U. S. Constitution's First Amendment. Ratna Kapur's response to the section on "The State and Human Rights" entitled "Neutrality and Universality in Human Rights Law," where she takes the Indian constitutional experience with democracy and applies it to all three prior papers, is a model of what these types of interactions can provide for us and other democracies.

DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW demonstrates much of our common ground-our understanding of our global problems, our faith in democratic processes, and our questions as to the potential limits of the rule of law. But the collection still struggles, despite a good intent, with the problem of American primacy. As long as we are sure we can provide the answers, we will lose on our opportunity to rethink our own democratic and legal assumptions.

REFERENCES:

Abraham, Henry J. 1998. THE JUDICIAL PROCESS: AN INTRODUCTORY ANALYSIS OF THE COURTS OF THE UNITED STATES, ENGLAND, AND FRANCE, Seventh Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bloch, Susan Low and Thomas G. Krattenmaker. 1994. SUPREME COURT POLITICS: THE INSTITUTION AND ITS PROCEDURES. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.

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Reichel, Philip L. 2001. COMPARATIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS: A TOPICAL APPROACH, Third Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Copyright 2001 by the author, Michelle D. Deardorff.