This book represents the first series of work presented within the project now known as PILAGG (private international law as global governance). The latter is emerging as a school of heterodox thinking within the traditional field of private international law. The project stems from the observation that legal governance of informal power beyond the state is inadequate, to the extent that it serves largely to promote unregulated emancipation of private transnational actors, with little accountability in return. The activities of multinational corporations, rating agencies, or arbitrators, all y ... More

This book represents the first series of work presented within the project now known as PILAGG (private international law as global governance). The latter is emerging as a school of heterodox thinking within the traditional field of private international law. The project stems from the observation that legal governance of informal power beyond the state is inadequate, to the extent that it serves largely to promote unregulated emancipation of private transnational actors, with little accountability in return. The activities of multinational corporations, rating agencies, or arbitrators, all yielding considerable power outside a domestic, public law framework, would all seem to fall within the remit of private international law; yet its tools are not fulfilling any disciplinary function in this respect, nor indeed do they acknowledge new forms of transnational normative authority. Indeed it appears to be largely indifferent to the current interdisciplinary debate on global governance. The chapters seek to present an explanation for this phenomenon in the schism which dislocated the public and the private branches of international law during the latter part of the nineteenth century; they also critique the privatization of sovereignty, law, and adjudication which accompanies largely neoliberal policies and visions in the global sphere; they then explore strategic, methodological, and theoretical avenues for ways in which private international legal tools could be revisited, reinterpreted, or re-used constructively.