This volume contains revised versions of a select number of research papers presented at a conference in Oslo, Norway, entitled “The New International Law”.
The conference was subtitled “Polycentric Decision-making Structures and Fragmented Spheres of Law: What Implications for the New Generation of International Legal Discourse?” This subtitle signals the most important elements of the conference’s main purpose which was to be a project in line with certain strands of contemporary scholarship on international law; scholarship that bases itself on certain assumptions regarding what are important and changing preconditions for the field of international law research.
Such assumptions include the transformation of sovereignty, the horizontal and vertical dispersal of governmental authority, the incompleteness of municipal law for legal regulation of individuals and private entities, states’ acceptance of treaty regimes whereby international authorities exercise regulatory power that interferes with domestic authority, and the proliferation of new dispute-settling bodies on the international plane. The volume aims to display the diversity within the new generation of international legal scholarship and to bring the analyses and arguments of this research to a wider audience. Topics addressed include environmental regulation, human rights and humanitarian protection, criminal law, and international security and development.