Transnational Legal Orders

Transnational Legal Orders offers an empirically grounded approach to the emergence of legal orders beyond nation-states that reframes the study of law and society.

This book offers a path-breaking, empirically grounded theory that reframes the study of law and society. It shifts research from a predominantly national context to one that places transnational, national, and local lawmaking and practice within a single, coherent, analytic frame. By presenting and elaborating a new concept, transnational legal orders, Halliday and Shaffer present an original approach to legal orders that affect fundamental economic and social behaviors. The contributors generate arrays of hypotheses about how transnational legal orders rise and fall, where they compete and cooperate, and how they settle and unsettle. This original theory is applied and developed by distinguished scholars from North America, Europe, and Asia in business law (taxation, corporate bankruptcy, secured transactions, transport of goods by sea), regulatory law (monetary and trade, finance, food safety, climate change), and human rights law (civil and political rights, rule of law, right to health/access to medicines, human trafficking, criminal accountability of political leaders).

A new approach for studying the interaction between international and domestic processes of criminal law-making in today's globalized world.

This book explores questions of transnational private legal theory in the context of the external dimension of EU private law. The interaction between existing theories of transnational ordering and the external reach of European Regulatory Private Law is articulated through examination of what are found to be the three major proxies of transnational private ordering: private contracts, standards and codes.

Constitutions are no longer exclusively national projects, but increasingly result from broader transnational processes that form a transnational legal order.

State responsibility in international law is considered one of the cornerstones of the field. For a long time it remained the exclusive responsibility system due to the primacy of States as subjects of international law. Its unique position has nonetheless been challenged by several developments both within and outside the international legal order, such as the rise of alternative responsibility ideas and practices, as well as globalization and its consequences. This book adopts a critical and holistic approach to the law of State responsibility and analyzes the functionality of the general rules of State responsibility in a changed international landscape characterized by the fragmentation of responsibility. It is argued that State responsibility is not equally relevant across the broad spectrum of international obligations, and that alternative constructions of responsibility, namely international criminal law and international liability, have increased in standing.

Leading law and society scholars apply an empirically grounded approach to the study of transnational legal ordering and its effects within countries.

In the process of resolving disputes, it is not uncommon for parties to justify actions otherwise in breach of their obligations by invoking the need to protect some aspect of the elusive concept of public order. Until this thoroughly researched book, the criteria and factors against which international dispute bodies assess such claims have remained unclear. Now, by providing an in-depth comparative analysis of relevant jurisprudence under four distinct international dispute resolution systems – trade, investment, human rights and international commercial arbitration – the author of this invaluable book identifies common core benchmarks for the application of the public order exception. To achieve the broadest possible scope for her analysis, the author examines the public order exception’s function, role and application within the following international dispute resolution systems: relevant World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements as enforced by the organization’s Dispute Settlement Body and Appellate Body; international investment agreements as enforced by competent Arbitral Tribunals and Annulment Committees under the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes; provisions under the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights and the European Convention of Human Rights as enforced by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, respectively; and the New York Convention as enforced by national tribunals across the world. Controversies, tensions and pitfalls inherent in invoking the public order exception are elucidated, along with clear guidelines on how arguments may be crafted in order to enhance prospects of success. Throughout, tables and graphs systematize key aspects of the relevant jurisprudence under each of the dispute resolution systems analysed. As an immediate practical resource for lawyers on any side of a dispute who wish to invoke or strengthen a public order exception claim, the book’s systematic analysis will be welcomed by lawyers active in WTO disputes, international investment arbitration, human rights law or enforcement of foreign arbitral awards. Academics and policymakers will find a signal contribution to the ongoing debate on the existence, legal basis, content and functions of the transnational public order.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the content, scope, and function of due diligence across various areas of international law. Looking at current tendancies towards proceduralisation and more proactive risk management, it reveals the promises and limits of due diligence as a concept for enhancing accountability and compliance.

From the viewpoint of the constitutional crisis in Europe, slow UN reforms, difficulties implementing the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court, and tensions between human rights and trade, Mireille Delmas-Marty's 'journey through the legal landscape' of the early years of the 21st century shows it to be dominated by imprecision, uncertainty and instability. The early 21st century appears to be the era of great disorder: in the silence of the market and the fracas of arms, a world overly fragmented by anarchical globalisation is being unified too quickly through hegemonic integration. How, she asks, can we move beyond the relative and the universal to build order without imposing it, to accept pluralism without giving up on a common law? Neither utopian fusion nor illusory autonomy, Ordering Pluralism is her answer: both an epistemological revolution and an art, it means creating a common legal area by progressive adjustments that preserve diversity. Since an immutable world order is impossible, the imaginative forces of law must be called upon to invent a flexible process of harmonisation that leaves room for believing we can agree on - and protect - common values. 'The book is timely and relevant to the practical concerns of those who work with, and within, the legal system. We must thank Professor Delmas-Marty for her fine work.' From the foreword, Stephen Breyer, Washington, DC