Since the mid-twentieth century, the boundaries between the international and the domestic, and between state and non-state, have ste adily eroded. This is not simply in terms of the proliferation of international rules with growing domestic effect, such as human rights law, it is also in terms of law and practice in one state shaping the laws and practice of other states through transnational connections. Horizontal links across state boundaries between legislators, regulators, judges and interest groups are increasingly shaping how laws are framed, interpreted and applied. This has led some international law scholars, working from the US liberal tradition, to declare the emergence of a new world order based on a complex web of trans-governmental networks.1 The European Union (EU) is often held as a prime example of this development, and indeed of the future trajectory of this world order.