Authority In Transnational Legal Theory

The increasing transnationalisation of regulation – and social life more generally – challenges the basic concepts of legal and political theory today. One of the key concepts being so challenged is authority. This discerning book offers a plenitude of resources and suggestions for meeting that challenge.

The interaction between state, transnational and international law is overlapping and often conflicting. Yet despite this messiness and multiplicity, law still creates obligations for its subjects. Despite its plurality, law still claims some kind of authority. The implications of this plurality of law can be troubling. It generates uncertainty for law-users over which law they are bound by, or for law-makers over the limits of their authority. Thus the practical problem is not plurality of law in itself, rather confusion over law's authority in such pluralist circumstances. Roughan argues that understanding authority in such pluralist circumstances requires a new conception of 'relative authority.' This book seeks to provide the theoretical tools needed to bring the disciplines examining legal and constitutional pluralism, into more direct engagement with theories of authority, by examining the one practice in which they are all interested: the practice of public authority.

This book traces the evolution of transnational legal authority in the course of globalization. Representative case studies buttress its conclusion that today transnational authority is multifaceted, a phenomenon that renders unreliable the concepts of territoriality/extraterritoriality as global governance markers.

Interactions between state, international, transnational, and intra-state law involve overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, claims to legitimate authority. This has led scholars to new theoretical explanations of sovereignty, constitutionalism, and legality, but there has been little treatment of authority itself. This book asks whether, and under what conditions, there can be multiple legitimate authorities with overlapping or conflicting domains. Can legitimate authority be shared between state, supra-state, and non-state actors, and if so, how should they relate to one another? Roughan argues that understanding authority in contemporary pluralist circumstances requires a new conception of relative authority, and a new theory of its legitimacy. The theory of relative authority treats the interdependence of authorities, and the relationships in which they are engaged, as critical to any assessment of their legitimacy. It offers a tool for evaluating inter-authority relationships prevalent in international, transnational, state, and non-state constitutional practice, while suggesting significant revisions to the idea that law, in general or even by necessity, claims to have legitimate authority.

Offering a nuanced and realistic account of the authority of international law, this book discusses whether international law is obeyed, and the type of duties it imposes on the state. Through a review of present accounts ranging from the mainstream to extra-disciplinary, the extent of authority is explored.

"This book offers an empirically grounded theory that reframes the study of law and society from a predominantly national context, which dichotomizes the study of international law and national compliance into a dynamic perspective that places national, international, and transnational lawmaking and practice within a coherent single frame. By presenting and elaborating on a new concept, transnational legal orders it offers an original approach to the emergence of legal orders beyond nation-states. It shows how they originate, where they compete and cooperate, and how they settle on institutions that legally order fundamental economic and social behaviors that transcend national borders. This original theory is applied and developed by distinguished scholars from North America and Europe in business law, regulatory law and human rights"--

The vast majority of all international judicial decisions have been issued since 1990. This increasing activity of international courts over the past two decades is one of the most significant developments within the international law. It has repercussions on all levels of governance and has challenged received understandings of the nature and legitimacy of international courts. It was previously held that international courts are simply instruments of dispute settlement, whose activities are justified by the consent of the states that created them, and in whose name they decide. However, this understanding ignores other important judicial functions, underrates problems of legitimacy, and prevents a full assessment of how international adjudication functions, and the impact that it has demonstrably had. This book proposes a public law theory of international adjudication, which argues that international courts are multifunctional actors who exercise public authority and therefore require democratic legitimacy. It establishes this theory on the basis of three main building blocks: multifunctionality, the notion of an international public authority, and democracy. The book aims to answer the core question of the legitimacy of international adjudication: in whose name do international courts decide? It lays out the specific problem of the legitimacy of international adjudication, and reconstructs the common critiques of international courts. It develops a concept of democracy for international courts that makes it possible to constructively show how their legitimacy is derived. It argues that ultimately international courts make their decisions, even if they do not know it, in the name of the peoples and the citizens of the international community.

Transnational merchant law, which is mistakenly regarded in purely technical and apolitical terms, is a central mediator of domestic and global political/legal orders. By engaging with literature in international law, international relations and international political economy, the author develops the conceptual and theoretical foundations for analyzing the political significance of international economic law. In doing so, she illustrates the private nature of the interests that this evolving legal order has served over time. The book makes a sustained and comprehensive analysis of transnational merchant law and offers a radical critique of global capitalism.