Rejecting current arguments that international law should be 'constitutionalized', this book advances an alternative, pluralist vision of postnational legal orders. It analyses the promise and problems of pluralism in theory and in current practice - focusing on the European human rights regime, the European Union, and global governance in the UN.

• Part I: Visions of Postnational Law


• 1: Postnational Law in Search of a Structure


• 2: The Promise and Perils of Postnational Constitutionalism


• 3: The Case for Pluralism


• Part II: Pluralism in Postnational Practice


• 4: The Open Architecture of European Human Rights Law


• 5: Sanctions and Rights between Hierarchy and Heterarchy


• 6: Pluralism in Postnational Risk Regulation


• Part III: Pluralism's Virtues (and Vices)


• 7: Cooperation and Power in a Pluralist World


• 8: Pluralist Challenges


• 9: Conclusions: Postnational Pluralism and Beyond

Nico Krisch is a Professor of International Law at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, where he moved in 2009 after being a Senoat the Law Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Previously, he held research positions at Merton College, Oxford, NYU Law School and the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. He is the author of Selbstverteidigung und kollektive Sicherheit (Self-defense and Collective Security, 2001), a co-editor of The Emergence of Global Administrative Law (Law & Contemporary Problems, 2005), and of articles on United Nations law, on hegemony in international law, and on the legal order of global governance. He is also a member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law.