ECONOMICS DRIVES THE LAW. Globalization is about more than cheap sneakers and Indian call centers. It is about pressures forcing the legal systems of every nation to take account, somehow, of what is going on in the rest of the world.

Ken Lay, Enron’s former boss, a friend and one-time client, was buried last week, free at last from the prosecutors who made the last five years of his life hell. Years ago, his alleged crimes would have been of no interest outside of the United States. But the stepped-up globalization of the energy industries in which Enron operated, and of the capital markets on which it relied, make its history of great moment to investors around the world and to lawyers, investment bankers, and others engaged in financing the activities of enterprises that increasingly operate across national borders. In Britain, three investment bankers, the so-called NatWest Three, are accused of complicity in the crimes that brought Enron down, were issued tickets for travel to a Texas court, which has to decide by Friday whether to overrule prosecutors and develop reasonable terms on which it would grant bail. The pictures of these three one-time masters of the universe in manacles understandably sent chills down the spines of bankers wherever they may be plying their trade. In the old days, when energy companies were primarily local operations providing gas and electricity within narrowly defined local franchise areas, the NatWest Three would never have crossed paths with American law, or with Enron.