Introduction *

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book emphasizes the degree to which international law must account for the variety of normative communities that are always competing for primacy. It addresses the jurisdictional issues head-on, explicitly questioning whether territory should continue to function as the way in which normative authority is delimited. The book focuses on the increasingly complicated interrelationships between national and international legal norms and dispute-resolution mechanisms. It explores transnational networks of governmental and nongovernmental actors. Over the course of the twentieth century, international law lost its privileged place as the primary conceptual framework for understanding the cross-border development of norms. The book also focuses on law and globalization may allow international law scholars to move beyond debilitating assumptions and polarizing debates about nation-state sovereignty.