Negotiating State and Non-State Law

Non-state law is playing an increasing role in both public and private ordering. Numerous organisations have emerged alongside the nation-state, each purporting to provide their members with rules and norms to govern their conduct and organise their affairs.

The nation-state increasingly finds itself sandwiched between two broad and contrasting categories of non-state law. The first—law above the state—captures legal systems that function across the territorial borders of nation-states. The second category—law below the state—includes forms of local customary, religious, and indigenous law.

As these forms of non-state law persist and proliferate alongside the nation-state, the relationship between state and non-state law becomes more complex, multifaceted, and tense. Negotiating State and Non-State Law addresses this relationship, considering whether and to what extent state and non-state law can coexist and how each form of law seeks to influence as well as transform the other.