In recent decades, new international courts and other legal bodies have proliferated as international law has broadened beyond the fields of treaty law and diplomatic relations. This development has not only triggered debate about how authority may be held by institutions beyond the state, but has also thrown into question familiar models of authority found in legal and political philosophy. The essays in this book take a philosophical approach to these developments, debates and questions. In doing so, they seek to clarify the relevant issues underpinning, as well as develop possible solutions to the problem of how legal authority may be constructed beyond the state.

The concept of global governance, which first emerged in the social s- ences, has triggered different responses in the discipline of law. This volume contains our proposal. It approaches global governance from a public law perspective which is centered around the concept of inter- tional public authority and relies on international institutional law for the legal conceptualization of global governance phenomena. This proposal results from a larger project which started in 2007. The project is a collaborative effort of the directors of the Max Planck Ins- tute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, research f- lows and friends of the Institute, as well as eminent members of the Law Faculty of the University of Heidelberg. Most of the materials contained in this volume were first published in the November 2008 - sue of the German Law Journal (http://www.germanlawjournal.com). We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the journal’s editors in chief, Professors Russell Miller (Washington and Lee University School of Law) and Peer Zumbansen (Osgoode Hall Law School, York U- versity, Toronto), for the opportunity to publish our papers as a special issue of their journal. The 2008-2009 University of Idaho College of Law German Law Journal student editors deserve special recognition for their hard and diligent work during the publication process. At the Institute, Eva Richter, Michael Riegner and the editorial staff of this publication series were instrumental in bringing this publication to fr- tion.

Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now available in English, is a historical and doctrinal study about the legal status of individuals in international law.

Examines the difficulties in applying international law to recent armed conflicts known as 'new wars'.

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.

We live in a world of legal pluralism, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes imposed by state, substate, transnational, supranational and nonstate communities. Navigating these spheres of complex overlapping legal authority is confusing and we cannot expect territorial borders to solve all these problems. At the same time, those hoping to create one universal set of legal rules are also likely to be disappointed by the sheer variety of human communities and interests. Instead, we need an alternative jurisprudence, one that seeks to create or preserve spaces for productive interaction among multiple, overlapping legal systems by developing procedural mechanisms, institutions and practices that aim to manage, without eliminating, the legal pluralism we see around us. Global Legal Pluralism provides a broad synthesis across a variety of legal doctrines and academic disciplines and offers a novel conceptualization of law and globalization.

This volume addresses the normative legitimacy of the international order, asking how we can make sense of legitimacy claims of increasingly diverse global governance institutions and practices and how their legitimacy relates to and differs from state legitimacy. State legitimacy is a central concern of modern political thought but is inadequate when applied to institutions that differ from the state in type, level of governance, scope, and much else. We need a new, tailored approach to the legitimacy of institutions beyond the state, especially international and transnational institutions. Such an approach includes foundational questions: what does it mean for institutions to be legitimate that have radically different purposes, means, interests, capacities, constituents, and roles from states? And what standards do such institutions have to meet in order to count as legitimate? The contributions to this volume seek to advance the debate on these questions at both abstract and more concrete levels. They range from conceptual questions about the nature of legitimacy and international institutions, to rule of law, to the legitimacy of the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court, and occupying military forces in the face of challenges specific to their nature and context. Together they demonstrate both the promise and challenges of theorizing legitimacy beyond the state. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Traditionally, legitimacy has been associated exclusively with states. But are states actually legitimate? And in light of the legalization of international norms why should discussions of legitimacy focus only on the nation-state? The essays in this collection examine the nature of legitimacy, the legitimacy of the state, and the legitimacy of supranational institutions. The collection begins by asking: What sort of problem is legitimacy? Part I considers competing theories, in particular the work of John Rawls. Part II looks at the legitimacy of state apparatus, its institutions, officials, and the rule of law, and the future of state sovereignty. Part III expands the scope of legitimacy beyond the state to supranational institutions and international law. Written by theorists of considerable standing, the essays in this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of law, politics, and philosophy looking for ways of approaching the problem of how extra-territorial affairs affect a state's written and unwritten agreements with its citizens in a world where laws and norms with legal effect are increasingly made beyond the state.

Non-state law is playing an increasing role in both public and private ordering. Numerous organizations have emerged alongside the nation-state, each purporting to provide their members with rules and norms to govern their conduct and organize their affairs. The nation-state increasingly finds itself sandwiched, between two broad and contrasting categories of non-state law. The first - law above the state - captures legal systems that function across the territorial borders of nation-states. The second category - law below the state - includes forms of local customary, religious, and indigenous law. As these forms of non-state law persist and proliferate alongside the nation-state, the relationship between state and non-state law becomes more complex, multifaceted, and tense. This volume addresses this relationship considering whether and to what extent state and non-state law can coexist and how each form of law seeks to influence as well as transform the other.

The state is central to social scientific and historical inquiry today, reflecting its importance in domestic and international affairs. States kill, coerce, fight, torture, and incarcerate, yet they also nurture, protect, educate, redistribute, and invest. It is precisely because of the complexity and wide-ranging impacts of states that research on them has proliferated and diversified. Yet, too many scholars inhabit separate academic silos, and theorizing of states has become dispersed and disjointed. This book aims to bridge some of the many gaps between scholarly endeavors, bringing together scholars from a diverse array of disciplines and perspectives who study states and empires. The book offers not only a sample of cutting-edge research that can serve as models and directions for future work, but an original conceptualization and theorization of states, their origins and evolution, and their effects.