scholarly journals Defining the Space of Transnational Law: Legal Theory, Global Governance and Legal Pluralism

2012 ◽  
pp. 53-86 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 65-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Sheptycki

Abstract Using the practical empirical example of the Interpol Organization, the paper explores the relationship between transnational organization and transnational law. Pace Jessup’s pioneering work in 1956, the central questions surrounding the notion of transnational law have involved understanding the use of legal tools in an administrative grey area of global governance across a range of legal institutions. This essay demonstrates how Interpol constituted as itself a formal ‘Intergovernmental Organization’ with its own self-governing structure and explores the use of one of its most powerful legal tools: the Red Notice. As a formally constituted igo with transnational reach and legally subject to its own constituted governance processes, Interpol is an example of what Neil Walker calls ‘constitutionalism beyond the State’. A fortiori, Interpol mobilizes a range of legal tools from transnational public international law and criminal law, as well as those of its own constitutional order, in making up its organization. Following Terence C. Halliday and Gregory Shaffer, and based on this empirical case study, the essay argues that Interpol is an important constituent element in the broader ‘transnational legal order’ of global policing. The challenge for socio-legal scholarship is to reveal how the transnational legal order of which Interpol is a part, is shaped by a variety of actors using different kinds of legal instruments because the institutional patterns thereby established have consequences for future developments. The transnational legal order of global policing is a synecdoche of global governance more generally and the specific case of Interpol provides the basis of some general claims about how to understand the concept of law under transnational conditions. The essay argues that Interpol is but a small constituent element of an evolving global system of rule with law. Rule with law emphasizes that in all practical circumstances legal tools are in the hands of knowing social actors. Understood this way, law is practical politics undertaken by means of legal tools. Interpol is but one element of a vast transnational legal order that has no democratic basis and which needs to be progressively uncovered through piecemeal empirical case studies. Read against the backdrop of broad socio-legal theory, such case studies offer critical insights concerning contemporary transnational legal ordering.


Author(s):  
Dai Yokomizo

This chapter reflects on the relation between transnational law and conflict of laws. Whereas the methodology of transnational law is, to a certain extent, in line with new approaches on conflict of laws seeking to find solutions for conflict of laws in a context of increasing global governance, the transnational method seems less compatible with classical choice-of-law methodology used in Japan and would therefore bring serious challenges to Japanese conflict of laws. To respond to these challenges, the chapter proposes identifying the specific situations in which a classical approach might still work and those in which it might bring an undesirable solution for global governance, before considering a complete change of the choice-of-law method. Finally, the chapter suggests that conflict of laws as a methodology could provide transnational law with fresh techniques to resolve conflict of norms in an era of global legal pluralism.


Author(s):  
Prabha Kotiswaran ◽  
Nicola Palmer

Twenty years into the current phase of globalization, a new field of transnational criminal law is in the making, expanding to cover issues as diverse as money laundering, counterterrorism, global banking, human trafficking, infringements of intellectual property rights, and cybercrime. The chapter introduces the concept of transnational criminal law (TCL) and deliberates on the dilemmas of TCL as applied to empirical legal phenomena before suggesting a sociolegal approach to further develop the field of TCL. In particular, the chapter brings to bear on TCL the rich debates within global governance and transnational legal theory. The chapter does this by decentering formal state law and examining the full range of technologies of governance, that nonstate actors increasingly propose in order to address transnational social problems.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Cotterrell

AbstractThe work of the Polish–Russian scholar Leon Petrażycki from the early decades of the twentieth century holds a strikingly paradoxical position in the literature of juristic and socio-legal scholarship: on the one hand, lauded as a supremely valuable contribution to knowledge about the nature of law and, on the other, widely neglected and little known. This paper asks how far Petrażycki's theories, expressed in writings by and about him available to an international readership, can provide insight for contemporary socio-legal studies – not as historical background but as living ideas. How far can his work speak to current issues and inform current debates? What obstacles stand in the way of this? Why have few international scholars engaged with his theories despite their rigour and originality? The paper starts from this last issue before addressing the others. It argues that Petrażycki's radical legal theory offers strikingly distinctive resources for rethinking issues about the role of law in multicultural societies, the nature of developing transnational law, and the significance of law as an aspect or expression of culture.


Author(s):  
Peer Zumbansen

While the term “legal pluralism’ literally denotes a plurality of legal orders, it is their plurality of and the distinguishing features between them, which continues to make the subject matter a very charged and hotly debated one. Seen through the lens of legal sociology and anthropology, the plurality of coexisting, normative orders appears, above all, as a matter of description, as a fact of social ordering. Meanwhile, as some of these normative systems are being claimed as being “law,” while others are associated with nonlegal forms of social order, such as customary, traditional, or indigenous norms as well as, perhaps, sector-specific rules of professional or industry conduct, the categories used to draw the lines between legal and nonlegal norms become in themselves highly contentious. The chapter argues that to neglect the fundamental distinction between legal pluralism as “manifestation” and as “argument” perpetuates a troubling inability on the part of positivist and analytical legal theory to engage with law’s inherent instability. Especially at a time, where the actors, norms, and processes that together constitute and shape emerging transnational regulatory regimes are located and operating both within and beyond the state as the purportedly singularly competent authority of law creation and enforcement, the deconstruction of “legal pluralism” as “nonlaw” and threat to the state can serve as the foundation for a new, critical legal theory.


Author(s):  
Philipp Reimer

»L’ÉTAT, C’EST LE DROIT!« – SOBRE A ATUALIDADE DA TEORIA DO ESTADO DE HANS KELSEN EM FACE DA METAMORFOSE DO PODER ESTATAL*  »L’ÉTAT, C’EST LE DROIT!« - ZUR AKTUALITÄT DER STAATSLEHRE HANS KELSENS IM ANGESICHT SICH WANDELNDER STAATSGEWALT  »L’ÉTAT, C’EST LE DROIT!« - THE CURRENT IMPORTANCE OF HANS KELSEN'S STATE DOCTRINE IN LIGHT OF THE STATE POWER CHANGES   Philipp Reimer**  RESUMO: Confrontada com evidentes mutações na estruturação de instituições e atividades estatais, a teoria do direito pode nos dizer que aspectos deste processo de metamorfose devem ser considerados pelos estudos jurídicos – bem como quais aspectos não precisam ser levados em conta. Fazendo uso de uma abordagem kelseniana, este artigo demonstra como a teoria do direito (compreendida como disciplina normativa) não enfrenta quaisquer dificuldades ao lidar com fenômenos da ordem do dia tais quais „soft law“, „governo de múltiplos níveis“ ou „pluralismo jurídico“. A distinção entre normativo e empírico é a chave interpretativa, aqui, de tal forma que a investigação desta última esfera pertence ao domínio das ciências sociais e não da teoria do direito. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Identidade entre Estado e direito. Hans Kelsen. Teoria pura do direito. Teoria normativa. Pluralismo jurídico. ABSTRACT: When facing eminent change of the way government institutions and activities are structured, legal theory can tell us in what respects legal scholarship needs to take account of such change - and also, in what respects is does not. Using a Kelsenian approach, this paper shows how legal theory (understood as a normative discipline) has no difficulty in coping with modern-day phenomena such as "soft law", "multi-level government", and "legal pluralism". The distinction of the normative and the empirical is key here, where the study of the latter falls into the domain of the social sciences, not legal theory. KEYWORDS: Identity of legal order and state. Hans Kelsen. Pure theory of law. Normative theory. Legal pluralism. SUMÁRIO: 1 Transformação do Estado – de que Estado? 1.1 Um Estado, duas dimensões, três elementos? 1.2 Diferenciação dos conceitos de Estado. 1.3 Conceito teórico-jurídico de Estado e transformação do Estado. 2 Transformações do conteúdo do direito. 2.1 Autorregulação. 2.2 »Soft law«. 3 Transformação da estrutura do direito: Substituição do Estado. 3.1 »Sistemas de múltiplos níveis« e »pluralismo jurídico« como (aparente) desafio a um teoria do direito centrada no Estado. 3.1.1 »Sistemas de múltiplos níveis«. 3.1.2 »Pluralismo jurídico«. 3.2 Substituição, não transformação do Estado. 3.2.1 A antiquada teoria do direito centrada no Estado como quimera. 3.2.2 A necessária unidade da perspectiva jurídica da ciência normativa. 3.2.2.1 Derrogação apenas internamente a uma ordem jurídica. 3.2.2.2 Construção do direito internacional público e do direito europeu. 3.2.3 O caráter arbitrário da escolha do ponto de partida da abordagem jurídica. Conclusão – perspectivas científico-normativas e científico-sociais sobre a “transformação do Estado”. Referências Bibliográficas. * Publicação original: REIMER, Philipp. »L’État, c’est le droit!« - Zur Aktualität der Staatslehre Hans Kelsens im Angesicht sich wandelnder Staatsgewalt. In: HESCHL, Lisa et seq (Eds.). L'État, c'est quoi? Staatsgewalt im Wandel. 54. Assistententagung Öffentliches Recht. Graz: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 2014, p. 37-57. Traduzido por Rodrigo Garcia Cadore, doutorando em Teoria do Direito e Direito Público pela Universidade de Freiburg (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), Alemanha, com autorização do autor.** Livre-docente em Direito Público e Teoria do Direito pela Universidade de Freiburg (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), Alemanha. Professor Privatdozent na Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Mainz (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz), Alemanha.


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