ABSTRACT
The chapters in this book focus on the role of lawyers as symbolic brokersentrepreneurs-investing and accumulating different forms of social, political and legal capital in order to be efficient merchants of social peace, and providing the full menu of multiple services as go-between but also as translators and mediators. Lawyers convert and invest various forms of capital-including social, economic, intellectual, political-into the law and legal institutions. That is the process that builds the role of lawyers and the rule of law. We ask in this concluding chapter what this kind of empirical approach can say about the emerging role of law in Asia, and in particular in the three largest East Asian economies-China, Japan, and South Korea. As we have noted, Asia, and China and Japan in particular, raise a powerful challenge to the idea that globalization is leading to the development of the rule of law throughout the countries integrated into the global economy. The belief of many in the rule-of-law community is that law is a form
of contagion that can spread from any of a number of bases. As Matthew Stephenson wrote, one way to see this is that reform in one area represents a “Trojan horse” for the legalization of the state and the economy more generally (2000). Many observers hope, for example, reform in the area of commercial law will spread to more recognition of individual civil rights. Reform in the method of legal instruction, or the development of clinics, will teach critical thinking that will lead to more leadership by law graduates in expanding the role of law and lawyers. Or the rise of corporate law firms will expand legal opportunities for individuals and build the autonomy of the courts. Stephenson is skeptical about the likelihood of the spillover effects of one development leading to a transformation in the role of law and lawyers in China. The assumption of many who explicitly or implicitly adopt the Trojan horse
approach is that the rule of law will gradually replace the power of personal relations-guanxi in China. A variation of that same dichotomy that is much the focus of recent literature on Asian law is that of administrative regulation versus the rule of law (Ginsburg 2007). This dichotomy can be seen, for example, in discussions of the role of the Korean or Japanese bureaucracy versus the law and the courts or the role of the Communist Party in China versus law or the courts.
