This book offers an empirically grounded theory that reframes the study of law and society from a predominantly national context, which dichotomizes the study of international law and national compliance into a dynamic perspective that places national, international, and transnational lawmaking and practice within a coherent single frame. By presenting and elaborating on a new concept, transnational legal orders it offers an original approach to the emergence of legal orders beyond nation-states. It shows how they originate, where they compete and cooperate, and how they settle on institutions that legally order fundamental economic and social behaviors that transcend national borders. This original theory is applied and developed by distinguished scholars from North America and Europe in business law, regulatory law and human rights.
