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.

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.

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.

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