ABSTRACT
Is it important to conceptualise transnational law and ‘map’ it as a new legal field? This chapter suggests that to do so can help both juristic practice and sociolegal scholarship by making it possible to organise, link, and compare what often appear as very disparate and problematic – but increasingly significant – types of regulation. The attempt to clarify the nature of transnational law in general terms raises basic questions about the nature of ‘law’, on the one hand, and of ‘society’ (the realm that law regulates), on the other. It forces a fundamental reconsideration of relationships between the public and the private, between law and state, and between different sources of law and legal authority. Drawing insights from recent efforts to develop a concept of ‘transnational private law’ and some lessons from the transnational technical regulation of Internet development, the chapter considers what approaches may currently be most productive in mapping transnational law and what key issues need to be addressed to make sense of broad current trends in law’s extension beyond the boundaries of nation-states.
