ABSTRACT
The most recent wave of globalisation inaugurated in the late 1980s has produced a crisis for lawyers everywhere. As we regroup to reconfigure, even overhaul entire bodies of legal theory and rework conceptual schema in discrete legal fields, criminal law is no exception. Neil Boister’s opportune intervention in 2003 to delineate the field of transnational criminal law (TCL) as a juridical counterpart to ‘transnational crimes’ resulting from the negative externalities associated with the liberalised movement of products, goods, services and indeed human beings is one such attempt.1 Boister defines TCL as ‘the indirect
1Neil Boister, ‘“Transnational Criminal Law”?’ (2003) 14(5) European Journal of International Law 953, 955. Similarly, scholars at Tilburg University Law School are proposing the concept of ‘global criminal law’ as a way for criminal lawyers to account for crimes that are strongly related to globalisation. This is worth mentioning here, even if only to highlight
Prabha Kotiswaran and Nicola Palmer
suppression by international law through domestic penal law of criminal activities that have actual or potential trans-border effects’.2 Central to this definition is the existence of an international treaty directed at suppressing conduct that is subsequently criminalised through domestic law. In this article we explore the underlying assumptions that Boister makes in calling this field of TCL into being. In doing so we show how challenging and rethinking these assumptions opens up valuable new research pathways.
