Summary
When we discuss the crisis of a legal system we also discuss its internal and external aspects. In other words, there is a disturbance of either internal (national) law or international law that brings about the question of functionality as well as the legal core of ethics that needs to be an end result of every modern legal system.
In respect to internal aspects of our own legal system, we do not need to address or provide evidence for separate examples since past several decades showed us indisputable facts of the legal system in crisis.
As far as the International legal system is concerned we will notice that in the past twenty years the legal crisis has started taking very unsettling turns and proportions. States that have internationally recognized military, economic and political power typically practice high legal standards within their own territory. One of the most striking examples of this inconsistency is United States court system that is practiced within their territory versus the one that is practiced, or supported outside of their territory (Guantanamo and The Hague). Differences are both striking and self-evident.
With respect to this, it is easy to conclude that countries such as these, that enjoy international power, do not experience crisis of the legal system, but rather cause one for other countries that lack international power. States that cannot meet or match military, economic and political power on the international scene are only recipients of international legal system that is shaped by more powerful states. In that role weaker states are faced with cyclical crisis of internal legal systems whose inception, duration and intensity are partly if not fully under the influence of the International legal system in crisis.
Powerful states secure their stability, which is certainly a precondition for economic and political stability, while they endorse legal instability on the international level, therefore affecting other state’s internal systems. This crisis of the International law as well as internal crisis of many sovereign legal systems has lasted too long and escalated so far that we can start treating it more as the twilight of the legal system than a simple crisis.
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