Since the end of the cold war, transnational relations have experienced profound changes and frequently faced with great challenges. The expectation of a time of peace, as imaged at the dawn of the new period, unfortunately didn’t come true as posterior events of indigenous conflicts and internal wars persistently proved that the conservation of world peace and security remains the top precedence for transnational community. In addressing security issues, similar as serious internal and indigenous conflicts, grave and massive violation of mortal rights, and terrorism, the constant resort to force has been seriously batted and questioned as important States and State groups are more inclined to restore “order” and “peace” by force than maintaining transnational conduct within the traditional limits.
No way ahead, still, has the living world order, particularly its legal institution for the conservation of transnational peace and security, endured such a extremity as rendered by the Iraq war, where the United States launched military operations against Iraq without the authorization of the Security Council and overthrew its government by force, overtly in defiance of the UN Charter and abecedarian principles of transnational law. Legal practices for sale in Florida
Disappointed and divided over the US conduct, the transnational community is further than ever deeply concerned with the impact of US foreign policy, particularly its new public security strategy-the “preemptive intervention”-, on the unborn legal order, and on the future of the multinational system of the United Nations. Really, the transnational legal system is witnessing change, but doubtful is the nature of this change. Professor Karl Zemanek’s essay has correctly placed the issue in focus.
It’s intriguing that Zemanek began his inquiry with the two introductory generalities concluded by the Japanese scholar, Yasuaki Onuma in his study on the history of transnational law from an inter-civilization perspective. In Onuma’s view as epitomized in the Zemanek’s essay, throughout history, transnational community, at colorful times and in different regions, is either decentralized, regulated by agreements between independent mortal groups participating a common world image, or centralized, governed by unilateral rules of a central conglomerate. Grounded on that proposition, Zemanek prodigies whether the current” Homeric” tendency of the United States may indicate a morning of transition of the transnational legal system from an equal and decentralized state towards a more centralized” conglomerate”. The areas that are linked as having formerly been affected by the tendency are fairly wide, some of which are of recent developments, (e.g. US positions on climate change and the International Criminal Court) and some are actually harmonious practice of the US, (for case, extraterritorial governance and judicial backing).
The American station towards transnational law in foreign relations as” Do what we say but not as we do” is notorious, which has frequently been blamed indeed by its own scholars and public. To study the impact of the American legal practice in transnational relations, the present discussion will start with the veritably introductory issue presented by Onuma, videlicet, “What’s transnational law?” Its purpose, of course, isn’t to claw into the major forms and structure of transnational communities, as the origin of transnational law isn’t the interest of the current discussion, but tore-emphasize what has told and shaped the law of nations as we know it moment and why, so that we’d be in a better position to appreciate what have been changed and what are affecting the legal order hereafter.