SEMINAR: Authority in a Transnational Age
AUTHORITY IN A TRANSNATIONAL AGE
8-9 November 2013/A Modern Law Review
Seminar
Hosted by the Centre for
Law and Society in a Global Context, School of Law, Queen Mary University of
London
Contemporary
jurisprudence – and legal scholarship and legal education more generally – is
currently under serious challenge from the emergence of arguably new legal
phenomena at the non-state or transnational level. This challenge is both
substantive and methodological. Substantively, legal scholars are being
confronted with, and asked to explain, phenomena which cannot easily be
explained by theories which put the sovereign state at the centre. Such
phenomena include internet regulation and the new lex mercatoria. New
jurisprudential problems are also raised by the growth of transnational
communities, which bring with them a variety of different legal traditions and
understandings. Methodologically, in this context, traditional conceptual
analysis is arguably ever more in need of being informed by empirical analysis
– for the old concepts, and their universalistic tendencies, are being
criticised as inadequate.
One concept
that calls for revision in the transnational context is authority. Considering
how that concept, juristically and normatively, is being challenged by the
transnational context is the focus of the seminar. Questions are being raised
as to whether authority is better conceived of as capable of being shared, or
held in degrees, or continuously negotiated amongst a group of communities or
institutions. Questions are also raised about what kind of authority exists at
the transnational level, and what it should be called – is it ‘legal’ or
‘regulalatory’? Further, it is being hotly debated whether authority so
re-conceived is normatively desirable.
A number of
scholars have argued that the reality at the transnational level is that
communities or institutions have (legal or regulatory) authority in degrees;
moreover, their sharing it, or negotiating it, with other communities or
institutions, is perhaps a condition of their having it at all. This
qualification of (legal or regulatory) authority in the transnational context,
which we may call, following Roger Cotterrell, ‘relative authority’, demands
serious analysis. In particular, it is imperative that jurisprudes and legal
scholars consider how to assess the quality of relations between normative
communities and institutions of relative authority: does such quality require,
for instance, certain unfamiliar techniques of legal reasoning? Should the
design of institutions change given the emphasis on communication and
interaction between them? What are the limits that can be placed – and who
could place them – on the claims to authority made by normative communities?
It is the
aim of this seminar to engage in such questions, focusing on juristic and
normative issues surrounding the concept of authority in the transnational
context, but drawing on multiple methods and perspectives. In doing so, the
seminar hopes to usher in a jurisprudence for the transnational age.
Additional information and the conference programme are available here.
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