5.3.5.1   Examples of Collaborative Legal Frameworks

(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book.  Current versions are at book contents).

Countries can create a collaborative legal framework by signing treaties which assign jurisdiction to an international court such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration, or they can set up their own judicial system.  The European Union is the prime example of the latter approach.

“The East African Court of Justice (EACJ) is an international court tasked with resolving disputes involving the East African Community and its Member States”, according to the International Justice Resource Center website.  It was instituted by a treaty.

Britannica reported that the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was “created in 2008 to propel regional integration on issues including democracy, education, energy, environment, infrastructure, and security and to eliminate social inequality and exclusion”.  It has nearly collapsed, for political reasons.  An Economist article on a planned successor, Why Prosur is not the way to unite South America, argued that “[a]ttempts at regional integration always seem to stumble over politics”.

These three examples are less fully developed than the EU, so the latter is described here in more detail in the following sub-sections.