Perhaps the greatest frontier for the study of law in society is the global. The production and maintenance of “law” in its global dimensions has generated new forms of interaction, interdependence, and international institution building. Students and scholars seeking fodder for exciting new projects are drawn to a topic as ripe and intriguing as globalization. History reminds us, however, that excursions into frontiers are frequently difficult and dangerous. Here the challenges are not of life and limb, of course, but of resources and intellectual energy. Are you able to locate all of the pieces of the puzzle that contribute to the “global” pattern? Can you find the time and money necessary to get you where you need to go? Then, can you bring theoretical meaning or order out of an evolving and complicated mess of interaction?

While studying even a single field or institution poses challenges enough (see, respectively, Dezalay and Garth, Chapter 18, and John Hagan, Chapter 22), what must empirically minded scholars do to capture a portrait of globalization processes across many substantive areas? Some of the answer provided by John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos in their monumental volume, Global Business Regulation, deserves a mixture of respect, appreciation, and trepidation: ten years, over five hundred interviews, and a final text 629 pages in length. Yet, in other respects, their experience provides some reassurances. English was nearly universal, for example, and much of the story of globalization remained concentrated in relatively few places – the power centers of the United States and Europe. As they explore in this interview, the perpetual issue of access may have been made easier by their world travel.