This book contributes to our understanding of one of the most pressing issues of modern international law: the relationship between the international legal order and the domestic legal orders of over 190 sovereign states.
The traditional and dominant understanding of this relationship is that there exists a strict separation between the international legal order and domestic legal orders. Processes of legal globalization and internationalization have made this relationship much more complex. Legal authority has shifted away from the state in both vertical and horizontal directions. Forced...

This book is the report of a journey. The reader is invited to join the author on a th trip in time and space. The trip takes its starting-point in 17 century Europe and th the as yet confused post-Thirty Years War society. After some stops in the 18 th and 19 century the author brings us to the post-World War I society which is as confused and is torn between ideals and despair. Then we make a stop in the post-World War II society when ideals seemingly have made place for trust in power but where we also get a glance of the fragile sapling of human rights law. And finally we pause in the...