This article illustrates how issues of sovereignty, jurisdiction, and criminal justice traditions preclude the possibility for international law enforcement homogenization in the near future. It does so by taking as an example some of the cultural-legal difficulties that arise when two countries such as Canada and Colombia attempt to engage in large-scale transnational law enforcement. In addition to the more philosophical issues of sovereignty are the numerous legal and cultural differences that make collaborative law enforcement extremely difficult. Many terms that North Americans take for granted prove to be problematic. For example, even the term law enforcement as used in Canada does not have an equivalent in Colombian law. An answer may lie in the acceptance of new definitions of sovereignty and new negotiated forms of multinational policing.
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