In recent decades, new international courts and other legal bodies have proliferated as international law has broadened beyond the fields of treaty law and diplomatic relations. Legal Authority Beyond the State (Cambridge University Press) considers how cutting-edge approaches to the philosophy of authority allow insight into this development. But, conversely, the contributors to the book also consider how our philosophical models of authority can be thrown into question by this development.

The book includes a chapter by Professor Capps, in which he discusses the evolutionary process by which global forms of administration and regulation develop. He writes that a vital part of this process is the entangling of new administrative forms within existing forms of legal accountability. Entanglement, as a form of what Kant called negative resistance, is a process which has the potential to drive the evolution of global administrative law to higher levels of authority.

A book launch event was held on 4 May 2018 at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts (iCourts) to celebrate the publication of this book. The launch included a presentation of the book by the authors, comments from Professor Astrid Kjeldgaard Petersen and Professor Mikael Rask Madsen, from the University of Copenhagen, and an open debate chaired by Professor Achilles Skordas, from the University of Bristol.

To find out more please visit the Cambridge University Press website.