Nico Krisch, BEYOND CONSTITUTIONALISM: THE PLURALIST STRUCTURE OF POSTNATIONAL LAW Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), Oxford Constitutional Theory, 2010. xxiv + 358 pp. ISBN 9780199228317. £50.
Pages | 291-293 |
Published date | 01 May 2012 |
Date | 01 May 2012 |
DOI | 10.3366/elr.2012.0112 |
How should we understand the role of law in a post-national constellation? Contemporary legal arrangements increasingly challenge traditional foundations of international law, such as the pivotal role of state consent, the divide between international and domestic spheres, the boundaries between public and private or the range of interests protected by transnational law. However, while there is wide agreement that international law is no longer just about the relations between sovereign states, there is much less agreement about possible alternative conceptual schemes that could make sense of the foundational changes in the transnational order. During the past few decades at least two competing approaches have been put forward: constitutionalism and pluralism. Constitutionalism is often portrayed as combining an emphasis on the unity of law with mechanisms to divide and control the exercise of (political) power. Pluralism, on the other hand, questions the possibility and desirability of an overarching legal order that provides unity and that contains and controls politics via legal rules. Instead, it accepts a plurality of competing and overlapping orders and concentrates on the different ways in which these legal orders (can) interact.
Nico Krisch unambiguously opts for a pluralist reading of the post-national constellation, as may already be inferred from the title of his book,
According to Krisch...
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