By HiiL, 2012

The Law Scenarios to 2030 provide four wind tunnels in which ideas and strategies concerning the law of the future can be tested and debated. The scenarios help us think, imagine, conceptualise and debate in order to make law more than just a reactive force. A force that helps shape a better future.

The scenarios picture possible global legal environments that have emerged in 2030. Each scenario invitesus to imagine the global legal environment in 2030, assuming that the key uncertainties unfold in a specificdirection. In each scenarios four questions are answered:
What is the main ordering?
Who makes the rules?
How are those rules enforced?
How are conflicts resolved?

Global Constitution

If the expansion of international rules and institutions continues, and most of the heavy lifting is done by states and public actors, we may expect that the global legal environment will slowly develop as the European Union has been developing: into a robust legal order of its own that is highly integrated with national legal systems.

Legal Internet

International rules and institutions can also further expand as part of a process of shifting emphasis from law created and enforced by state-connected institutions to private governance mechanisms and private legal regimes. If they do, the global legal environment will be characterised by a growing body of international rules and institutions with an increasingly public-private or even private nature.

Legal Borders

If the process of expansion of international rules and institutions reverses, we may instead see a thickening of legal borders, which may then be dominated by law created by national and public authorities. This global legal environment would be more fragmented; the international legal level would be less important and would include, atmost, the regional level.

Legal Tribes

There is a theoretical possibility that the process of internationalisation will reverse as private legal and governance regimes grow. The global legal environment will then become dispersed, highly chaotic, and have diminishing importance. Its integration will be regional at most and notparticularly law-based. The power of states will diminish and communities will have to depend on local, private legal and governance regimes.

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