The international legal system has weathered sweeping changes over the last decade as new participants have emerged. International law-making and law-enforcement processes have become increasingly multi-layered with unprecedented numbers of non-State actors, including individuals, insurgents, multinational corporations and even terrorist groups, being involved. This growth in the importance of non-State actors at the law-making and law-enforcement levels has generated a lot of new scholarly studies on the topic. However, while it remains uncontested that non-State actors are now playing an important role on the international plane, albeit in very different ways, international legal scholarship has remained riddled by controversy regarding the status of these new actors in international law. This collection features contributions by renowned scholars, each of whom focuses on a particular theory or tradition of international law, a region, an institutional regime or a particular subject-matter, and considers how that perspective impacts on our understanding of the role and status of non-State actors. The book takes a critical approach as it seeks to gauge the extent to which each conception and understanding of international law is instrumental in the perception of non-State actors. In doing so the volume provides a wide panorama of all the contemporary legal issues arising in connection with the growing role of non-state actors in international-law making and international law-enforcement processes.

This book adopts a 'trans-civilizational' perspective on the history and development of current West-centric international law.

Kate Parlett's study of the individual in the international legal system examines the way in which individuals have come to have a certain status in international law, from the first treaties conferring rights and capacities on individuals through to the present day. The analysis cuts across fields including human rights law, international investment law, international claims processes, humanitarian law and international criminal law in order to draw conclusions about structural change in the international legal system. By engaging with much new literature on non-state actors in international law, she seeks to dispel myths about state-centrism and the direction in which the international legal system continues to evolve.

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.

1. Introduction 2. Participants in International Law-making 3. Multilateral Law-making Processes 4. Codification and Progressive Development of International law 5. Law-making Instruments 6. The Role of Courts.

This book examines the status of private actors as subjects of law under the rules of the international law of the sea. Providing a methodology for the notion of a single legal personality, it provides a clear understanding of membership in international law in order to establish to what extent private actors can be rights-holders or duty-bearers. It does this by taking a theoretical perspective which allows the reader to interpret their relevance in international law. This unique and innovative work makes a significant contribution to the current scholarly debates on private actors in international law.

This volume provides a widely acessible overview of legal scholarship at the dawn of the 21st century. Through 43 essays by leading legal scholars based in the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Germany, it provides a varied and stimulating set of road maps to guide readers through the increasingly large and conceptually sophisticated body of legal scholarship. Focusing mainly, though not exclusively, on scholarship in the English language and taking an international and comparative approach, the contributors offer original and interpretative accounts of the nature, themes, and preoccupations of research and writing about law. They then go on to consider likely trends in scholarship in the next decade or so.