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L’importance croissante du pouvoir local a l’echelle globale doit etre comprise comme une expression de la place de plus en plus importante de la valeur d’autonomie locale. Elle doit etre guidee par une conceptualisation theorique des gouvernements locaux et de leur reglementation juridique, et par une analyse pragmatique des roles juridiques des villes dans les developpements mondiaux actuels. L’autonomie locale peut promouvoir des valeurs importantes telles que la participation democratique et la responsabilite, le multiculturalisme et le pluralisme, la separation verticale des pouvoirs et l’efficacite economique. Cependant, une autonomie locale non controlee augmente la dynamique de nivellement par le bas, rend la cooperation interlocale plus difficile, exacerbe les inegalites economiques et sociales et pourrait radicaliser les tensions religieuses, culturelles, politiques et ideologiques. Cet article cherche a developper cette idee d’autonomie locale en tant que principe juridique, et etudie ses significations possibles dans le contexte de la (de)mondialisation.

What role do cities play in the emerging global legal order? Over the past two decades cities have become objects of international and transnational regulation, and they have also begun enforcing international legal norms and standards. This transformation is part of an emerging global order that reconfigures cities and utilizes them in order to advance various, often conflicting ideological and political commitments. While there is a burgeoning body of literature on the globalization of cities, that literature has ignored the legal dimension of this phenomenon. This Article fills that gap and shows how “local” law impacts on “global” change. And while there is a growing body of literature dealing with the rise of non-state actors in international law and politics, that literature has overlooked the emergence of cities as independent agents. Drawing on examples from across the globe, the Article demonstrates that cities are gaining independent status and are functioning as vessels through which world norms reach individuals and communities. An important implication of the analysis is that we should recognize cities’ singular role as normative mediators between the world and the state. This function of cities is crucial because of their special characteristics as democratically organized communities in which place is not only 106imagined, but lived.

Cities in Israel are regulating religion and controlling religious liberty. They decide whether to close down roads during the Sabbath, whether to limit the selling of pork meat within their jurisdiction, whether to prohibit sex stores from opening, and whether to allocate budgets and lands to religious activities. They do all that by using their regular local powers as well as special enablement laws which the Israeli parliament enacts from time to time. The immediacy of these issues, the fact that the traditional powers – business licensing, traffic and road control, spending, and more – of local authorities touch upon many of them, and the inability of central government to obtain a nationwide consensus over religious matters have caused the localisation of religious liberty in Israel. In addition, some legal rules induce and even force religious-based residential segregation, thus resulting in a relative religious homogeneity of local populations. Hence, cities are able to decide to advance a religious – or a secular – agenda much more easily than the national councils. This process, however, has gone unnoticed by most scholars and courts. As a result, religious liberty doctrine has failed to live up to the challenges Israel is now facing: growing religious and national extremism and the ensuing risk of fragmentation and oppression of minorities. This article shifts the focus from the role of central government in regulating religion to that of cities. I argue that the particular form of decentralisation of religious liberty in Israel has a mixed outcome: it has helped to weaken the monopoly of orthodox Judaism in some locations and enabled diverse communities to flourish and express their unique religious vision; but it has also radicalised some religious practices, exacerbated tensions among competing religions and denominations, heightened religious-based residential segregation and jeopardised minorities.

The presenters on this panel discussed several important additional requirements for the successful implementation of a two-state solution that involves significant relocation of settlers. These requirements include balancing rights among different groups, minimizing the impact of “spoilers,” and providing political compensation to settlers. Presenters also highlighted the relevance of elements of classic negotiation theory to this issue, including thinking creatively about substance and paying appropriate attention to process.

The exclusion of private interests and passions from the political sphere has always been of great concern for philosophers, political theorists, and legal systems worldwide. In Corruption and Federalism: (When) Do Federal Criminal Prosecutions Improve Non-Federal Democracy?, Professor Hills presents a bold argument: This concern reflects the federal ("bureaucratic") version of democracy, which is antithetical to the "participatory" style of democracy prevalent in states and localities in the United States. Aggressively enforcing federal anti-corruption rules on non-federal public officials disregards this conceptual misfit and might lead to the disappearance of popular mass participation in politics. Hills is motivated by the idea that popular participation in government is a fragile achievement, and if we value the unique advantage it produces for the polity — an incomparable "schoolhouse for democracy" that breeds political knowledge in the citizenry — we need to oppose the heavy-handed implementation of federal anticonflict-of-interest ("anti-COI") laws on non-federals politicians.

New modes of environmental regulation are said to have transcended the public/private divide. These new regulatory schemes - referred to as non-coercive orderings, self-regulation, co-regulation, metaregulation and social regulation - set aside the formal nature of the regulating entity, the regulated entity, and the tools of regulation. Instead of asking whether the means, objects and formulators of the regulation are public or private, the focus lies on the substance and effectiveness of the regulation in mitigating environmental harms. In this Article we argue that despite these claims, often advanced by new governance proponents, the public/private divide in in fact alive and well, informing and impacting the ways in which various regulatory schemes are justified and legitimated. We exemplify this argument through an analysis of the role of three entities in international environmental regulation: the state (and its perception as sovereign), local governments, and civil society entities (both NGOs and business corporations). This Article then suggests three consequences of the persistence of the public/private dichotomy and its denial: it produces a “tilt” towards the private; it tends to hide conflicts and disagreements, projecting an image of a frictionless world; and it prevents an imagination of a different world that transcends the structure of social life embedded in it.

Ulrich Beck wrote a series of books on the reality of cosmopolitanism thereby starting a revolution in the human and social sciences internationally.