Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion

"Protracted and bitter resistance by alter- and anti-globalisation movements shows that the globalisation of law transpires as the globalisation of inclusion and exclusion. Humanity is inside and outside global law in all its possible manifestations. But how is this possible? How must legal orders be structured, such that, even if we can now speak of law beyond state borders, no emergent global legal order is possible that does not include without excluding? Is an authoritative politics of boundaries possible that neither postulates the possibility of realising an all-inclusive global legal order nor accepts resignation or political paralysis in the face of the globalisation of inclusion and exclusion? These pressing questions guide this book, opening up a vast field of enquiry that demands integrating sociological, doctrinal and philosophical perspectives and insights"-- "Globalisation processes are lived as the globalisation of inclusion and exclusion. That they are lived and experienced in this way means that they are not processes that take place elsewhere; they take place here, locally, and as a transformation of the local. This holds also for emergent global legal orders. They are not something different to what goes by the name of 'local' law; global law is local law because it involves a spatial closure that separates and joins an inside and an outside. Inclusion in and exclusion from rights and obligations go hand in hand with inclusion in and exclusion from the spaces of action over which emergent global legal orders claim authority. As protracted and bitter resistance by alter- and anti-globalisation movements around the world makes increasingly clear, humanity is inside and outside global law"--