Authorities: Conflicts, Cooperation, and Transnational Legal Theory
Nicole Roughan - Oxford University Press, 2013
Interactions between state, international,
transnational and intra-state law involve overlapping, and sometimes
conflicting, claims to legitimate authority. These have led scholars to new
theoretical explanations of sovereignty, constitutionalism, and legality, but
there has been no close attention to authority itself. This book asks whether,
and under what conditions, there can be multiple legitimate authorities with
overlapping or conflicting domains. Can legitimate authority be shared between
state, supra-state and non-state actors, and if so, how should they relate to
one another? Roughan argues that understanding authority in contemporary
pluralist circumstances requires a new conception of relative authority, and a
new theory of its legitimacy. The theory of relative authority treats the
interdependence of authorities, and the relationships in which they are engaged,
as critical to any assessment of their legitimacy. It offers a tool for
evaluating inter-authority relationships prevalent in international,
transnational, state and non-state constitutional practice, while suggesting
significant revisions to the idea that law, in general or even by necessity,
claims to have legitimate authority
