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The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law offers a comprehensive compendium for the field of Transnational Law by providing a unique and unparalleled treatment and presentation in an area that has become one of the most intriguing and innovative developments in legal doctrine, scholarship, theory, as well as practice today. With a considerable contribution from and engagement with social sciences, the Handbook features numerous reflections on the relationship between transnational law and legal practice.

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

This paper analyzes the contemporary emergence of neo-formalist and neo-functionalist approaches to law-making at a time when the state is seeking to reassert, reformulate and reconceptualize its regulatory competence, both domestically and transnationally. While the earlier turn to alternative regulation modes, conceptualized under the heading of "legal pluralism,ʺ "responsive law,ʺ or "reflexive lawʺ in the 1970s and 1980s, had aimed at a more socially responsive, contextualized, and ultimately learning mode of legal intervention, the contemporary revival of functionalist jurisprudence and its reliance on "social normsʺ embraces a limitation model of legal regulation. After revisiting the Legal Realist critique of Formalism and the formulation of functionalist regulation as a progressive agenda, this paper reflects on both the American and German justifications of market regulation and the Welfare State in order to trace the different evolution towards "responsive law" and legal pluralism in the U.S. and "post-interventionist" and "reflexive" law in Germany. This comparison allows for an identification of the emerging transnational qualities of legal normativity in the face of a declining welfare state paradigm, which - at the beginning of the 21st century - appears to provide the stage for turning the progressive gains of the former era into a set of market-oriented justifications of private autonomy and de-regulation.

This article revisits the improbable concept of "economic law," which originated in early- and mid-twentieth-century debates in search of a magical triad: a legal-political framework for a capitalist economy under democratic control. In analyzing its composite elements both in retrospect and in the current pandemic context, it becomes obvious how the elements generate complicated, potentially destructive dynamics with one another. The recently resurgent interest in the relationship between law and political economy provides a valuable opportunity to reimagine economic law at a time when many frameworks of the twentieth-century nation and post-welfare state have been exposed as vulnerable and fleeting—making the need for a critical legal methodology the more urgent. The analysis seeks to provide some starting points for such a methodology by taking a closer look inside the toolboxes that lawyers tend to open in times of crisis.

Esta lección inaugural expuesta en la Escuela de Derecho "Dickson Poon" de la Universidad King´s College London el día 28 de abril de 2016 siguió a la celebración de un simposio oficial de la iniciación del Instituto de Derecho transnacional. La iniciación oficial del simposio trajo a Londres a una selección de estudiosos del Derecho, antropólogos, cientistas políticos e historiadores para poner de relieve la multidisciplinariedad e interdisciplinariedad de la teoría jurídica transnacional a través de ejemplos sobre historiografía postcolonial, derecho laboral, gobernabilidad del cambio climático, trabajo sexual, comercio, responsabilidad corporativa, concentrándose en "la figura del migrante". La reflexión de la precariedad del trabajador migrante en Londres, nociones de "hogar", "pertenencia" y "membrecía" apuntan a la levedad de la condición humana. ¿Qué puede hacer el "Derecho" en este contexto más allá de operacionalizar la práctica estatal bajo el rótulo de Derecho de los refugiados, Derecho de los Asilados o Derecho de la Inmigración? ¿Puede el Derecho servir al lente crítico para transformar ausencia de ayuda en "agencia política", explotación en autonomía, desesperación en acción colectiva? --- This inaugural lecture, delivered at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London, on 28 April 2016, followed a day after the official launch symposium of the Transnational Law Institute. While the launch brought to London a selection of legal scholars, anthropologists, political scientists and historians to underscore the multi- and inter-disciplinarity of transnational legal theory through examples of post-colonial historiography, labour law and climate change governance, sex work, trade and corporate responsibility, the lecture focused on the 'figure of the migrant'. In reflecting on the precariousness of migrant workers' lives in London, notions of 'home', 'belonging' and 'membership' point to the fleeting nature of the human condition. What can "law" do in this context beyond operationalizing state practice under the labels of 'refugee', 'asylum' or 'immigration' law? Can law serve as a critical lens to transform helplessness into political agency, exploitation into autonomy and despair into collective action?

Esta lección inaugural expuesta en la Escuela de Derecho ¿Dickson Poon¿ de la Universidad King¿s College London el día 28 de abril de 2016 siguió a la celebración de un simposio oficial de la iniciación del Instituto de Derecho transnacional. La iniciación oficial del simposio trajo a Londres a una selección de estudiosos del Derecho, antropólogos, cientistas políticos e historiadores para poner de relieve la multidisciplinariedad e interdisciplinariedad de la teoría jurídica transnacional a través de ejemplos sobre historiografía postcolonial, derecho laboral, gobernabilidad del cambio climático, trabajo sexual, comercio, responsabilidad corporativa, concentrándose en ¿la figura del migrante¿. La reflexión de la precariedad del trabajador migrante en Londres, nociones de ¿hogar¿, ¿pertenencia¿ y ¿membrecía¿ apuntan a la levedad de la condición humana. ¿Qué puede hacer el ¿Derecho¿ en este contexto más allá de operacionalizar la práctica estatal bajo el rótulo de Derecho de los refugiados, Derecho de los Asilados o Derecho de la Inmigración? ¿Puede el Derecho servir al lente crítico para transformar ausencia de ayuda en ¿agencia política¿, explotación en autonomía, desesperación en acción colectiva? --- This inaugural lecture, delivered at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King¿s College London, on 28 April 2016, followed a day after the official launch symposium of the Transnational Law Institute. While the launch brought to London a selection of legal scholars, anthropologists, political scientists and historians to underscore the multi- and inter-disciplinarity of transnational legal theory through examples of post-colonial historiography, labour law and climate change governance, sex work, trade and corporate responsibility, the lecture focused on the `figure of the migrant¿. In reflecting on the precariousness of migrant workers¿ lives in London, notions of `home¿, `belonging¿ and `membership¿ point to the fleeting nature of the human condition. What can ¿law¿ do in this context beyond operationalizing state practice under the labels of `refugee¿, `asylum¿ or `immigration¿ law? Can law serve as a critical lens to transform helplessness into political agency, exploitation into autonomy and despair into collective action? ; Artículo revisado por pares

[T]he recent proposal made by Terence Halliday and Gregory Shaffer for a concept of "transnational legal ordering" emerges in the here described, contested realm of transnational law debates, which are, as we saw, part of a much larger investigation into law's relationship to globalization. In the following pages, I will attempt to draw out the implications of these debates for a project such as Halliday's and Shaffer's by showing how proposals of transnational legalpolitical order design require us to critically interrogate the underlying assumptions that inform our model building. I will argue that one of the most pertinent assumptions in the transnational legal order (TLO) model is the idea of the state not only as a still relatively stable institutional environment but also as a reliable guarantor of public good delivery. In light of the state's historical and symbolic prominence in the Western legal and political imagination in both these respects, there is a need to engage with the significance of the state, first, by revisiting a well-known story about the erosion of the welfare state under the conditions of globalization from the perspectives of both public and private law (II), before calling into question the alleged universality of the underlying assumptions regarding the state in that account (III). The next section will address concerns about the dominance of Rule of Law stories as they have been voiced by post-colonial scholars, before exploring the ways in which we trace the fragility of global law's "intimations" in the emerging spaces of global legal imagination, and intervention (IV). In the concluding section, we will engage with the methodological consequences of the foregoing analysis of transnational regulatory arrangements. Understanding transnational law less as a neatly demarcated field of law, but rather as a methodological framework through which it might be possible to keep the historical (however parochial) stories in play without universalizing them and with a view to drawing on diverse sources and backgrounds in the categorization and classification of emerging transnational governance structures, the article will suggest the triad of actors, norms and processes as a robust and promising conceptual framework to capture the institutional and normative challenges arising from the transnationalization of law (V).

The recent proposal made by Terence Halliday and Gregory Shaffer for a concept of "transnational legal ordering" emerges in the here described, contested realm of transnational law debates, which are, as we saw, part of a much larger investigation into law's relationship to globalization. In the following pages, I will attempt to draw out the implications of these debates for a project such as Halliday's and Shaffer's by showing how proposals of transnational legalpolitical order design require us to critically interrogate the underlying assumptions that inform our model building. I will argue that one of the most pertinent assumptions in the transnational legal order (TLO) model is the idea of the state not only as a still relatively stable institutional environment but also as a reliable guarantor of public good delivery. In light of the state's historical and symbolic prominence in the Western legal and political imagination in both these respects, there is a need to engage with the significance of the state, first, by revisiting a well-known story about the erosion of the welfare state under the conditions of globalization from the perspectives of both public and private law (II), before calling into question the alleged universality of the underlying assumptions regarding the state in that account (III). The next section will address concerns about the dominance of Rule of Law stories as they have been voiced by post-colonial scholars, before exploring the ways in which we trace the fragility of global law's "intimations" in the emerging spaces of global legal imagination, and intervention (IV). In the concluding section, we will engage with the methodological consequences of the foregoing analysis of transnational regulatory arrangements. Understanding transnational law less as a neatly demarcated field of law, but rather as a methodological framework through which it might be possible to keep the historical (however parochial) stories in play without universalizing them and with a view to drawing on diverse sources and backgrounds in the categorization and classification of emerging transnational governance structures, the article will suggest the triad of actors, norms and processes as a robust and promising conceptual framework to capture the institutional and normative challenges arising from the transnationalization of law (V).

AbstractComparative lawyers have for more than a century sought to increase the understanding of 'foreign' legal orders and regulatory systems. Despite some never fully resolved methodological questions, great advances have been made in the comparative study of different regulatory areas both in 'private' (contract, tort, corporate, labour) and 'public' law (administrative law, environmental law). Comparative constitutional law [CCL] has emerged as a field with particular significance. Born in the context of a politically extremely divided world after the Second World War, CCL has undergone tremendous change in an economically fast-integrating world since the late 1980s. The distinction between 'liberal' and 'socialist' constitutional orders that characterized early monographical treatments of the subjects has since given way to a very incoherent landscape ofvarieties of constitutionalism, with enormous consequences for the task of comparative constitutional law. Rather than being able to set side-by-side distinct doctrinal instruments or legal principles that can be associated with a particular constitutional system, the emerging transnational legal-pluralist order demands a methodologically radically opened and methodologically interdisciplinary approach to capture the dynamics of constitutionalization, which characterize today's processes of public-private norm creation and diffusion.

The following paper is part of a multi-year research project that investigates the emergence of a transnational corporate governance regime as a key example of the transformation of state-based regulation. This example received an extensive treatment in the context of a monographical study co-authored with Gralf-Peter Calliess (University of Bremen, and Director, Collaborative Research Centre 597 'Transformation of the State', Program on 'Legal Certainty on Global Markets'). The monograph was published in May 2010 with Hart Publishing under the title: Rough Consensus and Running Code: A Theory of Transnational Private Law. The growing significance of expert committees mandated or self-empowered to draft binding norms for market participants in a wide range of fields illustrates the decentring of norm creation and rule-making in the 'post-regulatory state' of the early 21st century. The paper also contributes to a larger research project on transnational private regulation, carried out under the auspices of Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law [HiiL] at University College Dublin, the European University Institute and Tilburg University. It addresses the regulatory challenges arising from a fast-growing body of norms produced by non-state actors in the transnational arena. Focusing on the example of corporate governance codes through a legal pluralist lens, the paper investigates the arguments that qualify corporate governance codes as either 'soft' law or as non-law and rejects this categorization with reference to the wide-ranging evidence of new forms of regulatory governance both within and outside of the nation-state. The creation of corporate governance codes is seen as example of indirect regulation in politically sensible regulatory areas, where state law makers engage in forms of collaborative norm creation for example in the form of private code drafting and subsequent public endorsement. In the case of the German corporate governance code, however, the drafting of the Code occurred in a non-exclusively private sphere, which raises important questions as to the adequacy of the public-private distinction with regard to the assessment of the existence or the lack of legitimacy of contemporary norm-making processes. This paper was first presented at the Inaugural International Programme Conference of the HiiL Project at University College Dublin on 16 June 2010. ; Der folgende Aufsatz ist Teil eines langjährigen Forschungsprogramms zur Herausbildung eines transnationalen Gesellschaftsrechts als eines Schlüsselbeispiels der Transformation des Staates, das in einer vom Verfasser gemeinsam mit Professor Gralf-Peter Calliess am Sonderforschungsbereich 597 an der Uni Bremen verfassten Monographie (Rough Consensus and Running Code: A Theory of Transnational Private Law, Hart Publishing: 2010) unlängst untersucht wurde. Die Herausbildung von Expertenkommissionen, die entweder mit staatlichem Auftrag oder aus eigener Initiative verbindliche Regeln zur Unternehmensführung schaffen, spiegelt eine grundlegende Dezentrierung der Norm- und Regelsetzung im 'post-regulären Staat' des beginnenden 21. Jahrhunderts wider. Der Aufsatz gehört gleichzeitig zu einem größeren Forschungsprojekt zur transnational private regulation, welches unter der Schirmherrschaft des Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law [HiiL] am University College Dublin, dem Europäischen Hochschulinstitut und der Universität Tilburg ausgeführt wird. Es wurde in dieser Fassung auf der ersten Internationalen Programmtagung des Projekts am 16. Juni 2010 in Dublin vorgestellt.