The Many Lives of Transnational Law
Critical Engagements with Jessup's Bold Proposal

Sixty years after Jessup's Transnational Law Lectures, this collection traces the field's development and significance to the present day.

Peer Zumbansen (Edited by)

9781108490269, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 April 2020

536 pages, 2 b/w illus. 4 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 3 cm, 0.86 kg

'Transnational Law is more than and different from Public International Law. This idea encompasses a whole world of facts, of instruments and of thoughts. Over the past sixty years, Transnational Law has ventured far beyond the circles of international lawyers as it continues to resonate with efforts in political science, theory and philosophy to conceptualize political order and democratic legitimacy across the nation-state's boundaries. The gift of writings presented here to Jessup and to the legal community at the 60th anniversary of the first publication of 'Transnational Law' sketches and revisits this history and idea in a truly congenial way – dense, thoughtful, and inspiring.' Stefan Grundmann, European University Institute, Florence and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

In 1956, ICJ judge Philip Jessup highlighted the gaps between private and public international law and the need to adapt the law to border-crossing problems. Today, sixty years later, we still ask what role transnational law can play in a deeply divided, post-colonial world, where multinationals hold more power and more assets than many nation states. In searching for suitable answers to pressing legal problems such as climate change law, security, poverty and inequality, questions of representation, enforcement, accountability and legitimacy become newly entangled. As public and private, domestic and international actors compete for regulatory authority, spaces for political legitimacy have become fragmented and the state's exclusivist claim to be law's harbinger and place of origin under attack. Against this background, transnational law emerges as a conceptual framework and method laboratory for a critical reflection on the forms, fora and processes of law making and law contestation today.

Introduction: transnational law, with and beyond Jessup Peer Zumbansen
Part I. Transnational Law: The Public and the Private: 1. Jessup at the United Nations: international legacy, transnational possibilities Stephen Minas
2. The concept of a global legal system Christopher A. Whytock
3. How comity makes transnationalism work Thomas Schultz and Niccolò Ridi
Part II. Transnational Law as Regulatory Governance: 4. Aiding and abetting in theorising the increasing softification of the international normative order – a darker legacy of Jessup's transnational law? Karsten Nowrot
5. From international law to transnational law, from transnational law to transnational legal orders Gregory Shaffer and Carlos Coye
6. Transnational law in the Pacific Century: mapping pesticide regulation in China Francis Snyder, Zhouke Hu and Lili Ni
7. Transnational law in context: the relevance of Jessup's analysis for the study of 'international' arbitration Florian Grisel
8. Transnational Law and Adjudication – Domestic, International and Foreign Intersections Bryan Horrigan
9. Transnational Law and Global Dispute Resolution Shahla Ali
10. Conflicts of law and the challenge of transnational data flows Paul Schiff Berman
11. What lex sportiva tells you about transnational law Antoine Duval
12. Family law: a blindspot Ivana Isailovic
Part III. Transnational Law: The Field's Normative Stakes: 13. Locating private transnational authority in the global political economy A. Claire Cutler
14. Transnational law as drama Jothie Rajah
15. Transnational law as unseen law Natasha Affolder
16. The Cri De Jessup sixty years later: transnational law's intangible objects and abstracted frameworks Larry Catá Backer
17. The private life of transnational law: reading Jessup from the postcolony Prabhakar Singh
18. After the backlash: a new pride for transnational law? Ralf Michaels
Part IV. Conclusion: Epilogue – difficulties for every solution: defining transnational law at the edge of transdisciplinarity Vik Kanwar.

Subject Areas: Private international law & conflict of laws [LBG], Public international law [LBB], Comparative law [LAM], Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB]