Stateless Law: From Legitimacy to Validity
Helge Dedek and Shauna Van Praagh, eds, Stateless Law: Evolving Boundaries of a Discipline (Ashgate, 2015) 133-142
19 Pages Posted: 18 Feb 2015 Last revised: 17 May 2016
Date Written: February 17, 2015
Abstract
A central concern of many critics of the growing phenomenon of stateless law has turned on its democratic nature. Clearly, law in transnational space, whether promulgated by states or not, bears an uncertain relationship to the structures and processes for democratic legitimation of political authority as developed within the constitutional state; therefore, its status as valid law may be called into question. In this paper, I argue that transnational law, including stateless law, can be seen as grounded in democratic principles. However, when law moves into transnational space, democratic legitimation of law takes on a different form than in the constitutional state.
Keywords: transnational law; societal constitution; democratic legitimation
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