The United States Congress and the Legal Regulation of the Economy in the Context of World-Systems Analysis

The world-systems analysis developed by sociologists and political scientists in recent decades has not yet become widespread in the legal sciences. It can be used in the study of the history of the development of the state and law, as it allows to determine the influence of law on the formation of a capitalist world-economy. The history of the U.S. is a vivid example of such influence. The Congress of this country has played a key role in regulating economic activities – the main factor of the state movement along the world axis “core – periphery”. Purpose: To define the role of the U.S. Congress in regulating economic activities in the 18th–20th centuries, which allowed this country to take a leading position in the capitalist world-system. Methods: The comparative legal method allows to assess changes in the legal policy of Congress regarding economic regulation during the periphery, semi-periphery, and core periods; the interpretive method contributes to the identification of patterns in the transformation of legal regulation of the economy following the U.S. movement along the axis “core – periphery”; the legal-dogmatic method and the method of interpreting legal norms are used in the analysis of legislation of Congress in historical retrospective. Results: the study establishes a correspondence of the chronological periods of the U.S. movement from the periphery to the semi-periphery and the core of the capitalist world-system with the change in the nature of legal regulation of the economy by Congress from a laissez-faire regime (market capitalism) to the fusion of the interests of members of parliament and the interests of monopolies (state-monopoly capitalism), the expansion of legal regulation to transcontinental corporations and foreign policy expansion.