Conclusion: Are Legal Systems Converging or Diverging?

Discussions around the phenomena of legal convergence and divergence have been discussed vigorously in the legal literature. Decades later, the debate over whether legal systems are converging or diverging is still ongoing. Studies in convergence or divergence have traditionally adopted a purely thematic approach, i.e. comparatively studying whether one area of law is converging across countries (Naude, Journal of Consumer Policy, 43:11–33, 2019; Siems, Convergence in Shareholder Law, 2008); van Niekerk, Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa, 35:308–318, 2002); Mullineux, Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance 15:8–19, 2007); Robertson and Tilbury, The Common Law of Obligations. Divergence and Unity, 2016; Goanta 2016) or a common law versus civil law dichotomy (Mattei and Pres, The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, 267–280, 2008; Nottage, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 32:843–852, 2001). However, nowadays, national legal systems do not exist in isolation from one another; they interact and conduct a ‘legal dialogue’, which support their improvement, development, and overall change. Therefore, it is impossible to truly determine whether legal convergence is happening without conducting a cross-legal disciplines study. At a time when the world seems to be in a state of disintegration following several successive crises, one may question the timeliness of discussions around convergence. Jean Monnet famously wrote that ‘people only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them […]’(Monnet, Memoirs, 1978, p. 109.) It is true that the world is in shambles. Circling back to the discussion presented in the introduction, the number of crises in the last two decades has been at an all-times high, while their nature has been extremely varied, ranging from economic crises to global pandemics. The crises witnessed by the world over the last two decades have highlighted two paradoxical tendencies: (i) increased cooperation and a natural phenomenon of legal convergence as States find common solutions to common problems; or (ii) a preference for state-centric solutions, which prioritise domestic interests, a rejection of supranational standards and harmonisation efforts and a protection of domestic sovereignty, possibly leading to a phenomenon of legal disintegration. The authors in this book have attempted to determine which tendency has been more prominent over the last 20 years. The analyses provided in the chapters of this book seem to point to the fact that overall, in times of crisis, legal systems tend to converge, rather than diverge. Therefore, it is our argument that crises are, in fact, a vector for convergence.