Anglophone, Civilian, and Islamic Legal Cultures: Three Views of Human Trust in the Age of Technology and Globalization

Abstract

:The project to construct a global regimen of law raises questions about whether human relations of personal trust continue to be relevant—especially, in a technologically mediated reality of atomized social connections. Some answers may be found by comparing the role of trust in the fundamental premise of each of the three historic legal cultures, Anglophone, Civilian, and Islamic. In fact, the understanding of human trust works differently in each of those legal regimes. One has a pejorative view of human nature, trusting its tendency to reprobation. Another trusts the faculty of human reason, its potential for growth and development, but mistrusts human subjectivity. The third is based on confidence in the natural human capacities, including bonds of personal trust. These differences began with the historical origin of each tradition. One, born as a system of legal commerce, was based on collegiality. One, produced by scholars and philosophers, was based on ideals and principles. One universalized its sacred teachings by combining them with patterns of reciprocity and accord that had existed earlier among tribes and peoples. Their different assumptions about human nature resulted in different conceptions of what law is, the method it should employ, and the purpose it can serve. Each tradition operates within its population on a different principle. In contrast with one another, they represent, respectively, faith and obedience, reason and order, justice and conciliation. As technology penetrates national borders, transcending barriers of topography and distance, it has brought these three traditions together. The conflict arising from that encounter raises profound questions about what form of legal culture will eventually predominate, what conception of human nature will prevail, and what level of human trust will define the global age.