Read more
How can legal authority be explained beyond the sovereign state? Roughan argues that instances of transnational and international law, along with overlapping constitutional orders, should be regarded as having shared, interdependent, and relative authority.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Part I: Authority and Plurality
- 2: Understanding Authority
- 3: Plural Authorities and Inter-Authority Relationships
- 4: Plurality of Authority in Legal/Constitutional Theory
- Part II: The Puzzles of Plural Authority
- 5: Compatible and Complementary Relationships
- 6: Actual and Apparent Conflict
- Part III: A Pluralist Conception of Authority
- 7: A Conjunctive Justification
- 8: 'Relative Authority'
- 9: The Relative Authority of Law: 'Pluralist Jurisprudence'
- Part IV: Relative Authority in International, Transnational (and) Constitutional Law
- 10: Relative Authority in Public International Law and Transnational Law
- 11: Understanding Europe: from Constitutional Pluralism to Relative Authority
- 12: Relative Authority Inside the State
- 13: A Case Study in Relative Authority: Crown-Maori Relationships in New Zealand
About the author
Nicole Roughan is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Auckland, and formerly of the National University of Singapore where she was Associate Professor and Deputy-Director of the Centre for Legal Theory. Nicole is currently working on a new book,Officials. In 2017 Nicole was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society Te Aparangi, to pursue a five-year project on Legalities: Jurisprudence without Borders.
Summary
How can legal authority be explained beyond the sovereign state? Roughan argues that instances of transnational and international law, along with overlapping constitutional orders, should be regarded as having shared, interdependent, and relative authority.
Additional text
The world around us changes, and with it, the explanatory and normative value of received theoretical effort. To undertake the complex work of conceptual revision that is needed when an assessment of that serviceability comes up short is a difficult endeavour. But to regard received resources with a conciliatory eye when doing so, resisting the urge to simplify and polarise in favour of moments of contact, concession, and conjunction, is a particular kind of achievement. Nicole Roughan's accomplishment in Authorities is that she delivers on all of these things. Erudite, carefully-argued, and beautifully written, the book is a genuine pleasure to read.
