In their work titled Deals de justice, and sub-titled, Le marché américain de l’obéissance mondialisée, a group of law experts, solicitors and magistrates discuss a baffling business-oriented justice. What are the pillars of this formidable, unique and fast justice, which is delivered without a legal judge, solicitors and trial?

1.      The US’s Judiciary is Open to the World

According to Antoine Garapon, the USA, as a huge country, has always considered that justice must be applied to all and even worldwide. From Nuremberg to the Alstom case, nothing prevents the US from colonising the world with its law. However, 1977 was a major milestone in the process of institutionalising the extraterritoriality of America’s judicial system because it was then that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was voted to sanction the corrupt practices of multinational companies beyond American soil. Since that time the Deferred Prosecution Act (DPA) and the Non-Prosecution Act (NPA), which allow American judiciary to investigate a company suspected of violating US laws anywhere in the world and to dispatch its agents to such a company to comb the company’s records to confirm whether it is guilty or not. “There is no smoke without fire”, writes Pierre Servan Schreiber. There is no shortage of reasons or pretexts. It suffices to pay in US dollars, to use an American server, to be listed on an American stock exchange, etc. to fall under this kind of  “negotiated justice” (Olivier Boulon).

The sudden death of Professor Samir Amin was announced on 12 August 2018. He dedicated his life, research work, and political praxis to the post-colonial liberation of countries of the South from their colonial heritage. Probably, Samir Amin was the only renowned Third World economist in universities across the world. In the 1960s, he broke into economic thinking, which, up till then, was a restricted area, at the margins of science. With a rare intelligence and eloquent criticism, he brilliantly echoed the voice of the South. He denounced the world economic system that was driving the marginalisation of economically weak countries, as it were at that time, and contributed to reflection on more global solidarity before the emergence of global justice movement.

Generations of students, researchers and scholars from Dakar to Jakarta, from Cairo to Sao Paolo and from Paris to Pekin were nourished by the works of Samir Amin. They covered topical issues in Third-World countries, ranging from his thoughts and theories on the global economy, development, the trend of Third-World politics to his analyses on Islamism and neo-liberalism. But beyond the economist and the great thinker whose thoughts marked the world, was the man who chose to live a simple life, fully dedicated to his ideas and thoughts.