This is a foundational course to introduce students both to the central concepts of comparative legal systems and to major contemporary political economic trends that are reshaping the context in which private international transactions are conducted in North America, Europe, and East Asia. The course is organized around contrasting views of the nature of this practice. On one hand, it looks at comparative law analyses that emphasize the differences between national legal systems that follow the Civil, East Asian, and Common Law traditions. On the other hand, it opposes to these arguments that legal systems remain strongly differentiated the alternative assertion that modern legal practice is rapidly converging in all the advanced industrial economies due to pressures associated with globalization. The materials focus on the development of economic law in the areas of corporate governance, capital markets and finance, labor and social welfare, and antitrust (competition) and regulated industries in the European Union, North America, and Japan. The course compares not only whether convergence varies between these legal fields, but also whether we see more or less maintenance of the classical legal traditions in different economic sectors, including manufacturing, financial services, telecommunications and energy.