Abstract
Law arises from custom and precedents as well as from formal legislation. It is • constantly mixing these in different combinations, developing and changing to meet different historical needs and creating diverse jungles of regulations and interpretations among human societies.
Differences in the various national systems of law contribute to even greater complexities in international relations, which nations constantly struggle to resolve through a body of understandings, agreements and treaties based on negotiation and compromise: 'international law'. If all else fails, they resort to remote or proximate threats of economic coercion and military force to impose control over their relationships.
This issue of Trends cannot hope to address all of this massive and labyrinthine topic. We therefore have limited ourselves to reviewing two areas of the international law of communications which are especially relevant to human dignity and which are undergoing especially rapid change: laws regulating speech and those dealing with the economics of telecommunications.
Many of the legal issues dealt with here have first been argued before courts in the United States, which has more lawyers and more litigation per capita than any other country. The discussion therefore tends to have an American emphasis; but the issues affect the right to communicate of everyone on earth.
Recommended Citation
Goggins, Patrick J. and Conn, James J. S.J.
(1992)
"The Internationalization of Communications Law,"
Communication Research Trends: Vol. 12:
No.
4, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/crt/vol12/iss4/1