Private Power and Global Authority

A. Claire Cutler is Associate Professor of International Relations and Law at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. She is joint editor of Private Authority and International Affairs (1999) and Canadian Foreign Policy and International Economic Regimes (1992).

'… a very valuable step towards embracing a more comprehensive view of the complexity of developments in national, international and transnational law … Private Power and Global Authority deserves to be highlighted in many respects … a much needed study in internal relations. It is, in fact, more precisely a crucial report on international affairs.' EJIL

• 1. Introduction; 2. Conceptualizing the role of law in the global political economy; 3. Theorizing the role of law in the global political economy; 4. Medieval Lex Mercatoria; 5. State-building: constituting the public sphere and disembedding the private sphere; 6. The modern law merchant and the Mercatocracy; Conclusion: transnational merchant law and global authority: a crisis of legitimacy; Bibliography.