Cotterrell, Roger --- "Transnational legal authority: a socio-legal perspective" [2016] ELECD 1237; in Cotterrell, Roger; Del Mar, Maksymilian (eds), "Authority in Transnational Legal Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 253

Book Title: Authority in Transnational Legal Theory

Editor(s): Cotterrell, Roger; Del Mar, Maksymilian

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784711610

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Transnational legal authority: a socio-legal perspective

Author(s): Cotterrell, Roger

Number of pages: 27

Abstract/Description:

This chapter argues that the range of authority claims now being made to support transnational regulation, and the kinds of legitimacy that these claims attract, cannot be adequately analysed in the terms that jurists usually assume in considering Western state law. A temporary distancing from orthodox juristic concepts is needed: to survey the range of authority claims now made and widely accepted, to consider how these can be compared and assessed, and to avoid rigid preconceptions about their potential legal significance. The chapter claims that Max Weber’s typology of legitimate domination can usefully guide a socio-legal approach that treats authority as a matter of practice and experience. Weber’s concept of charisma offers a partial template for studying kinds of authority that, at present, escape sufficient juristic attention. Juristic engagement with the diversity of forms of transnational authority now recognised in practice must base itself on socio-legal study of these forms and their conditions of existence. Only with the aid of such study can jurists gain perspective on the formidable challenges of negotiating a viable, shifting normative ordering of transnational regulation.