18 - After the Backlash

Summary

The chapter discusses the current backlash against transnational law, as exemplified in the Brexit discussions underway in the United Kingdom. That backlash, it is argued, is based on an irrational nostalgic desire for the past: there is no return to the nation state as it existed. But much contemporary transnational law suffers from a nostalgia of its own—nostalgia for the period, some sixty years ago, when transnational law was first developed. That time, the post-war area, is as irreversibly passé as is the nation state, and transnational law, it is argued, can no longer rest on the ideas of its birth. Instead, the chapter advocates for a renewal of transnational law based on a new “PRIDE.” That PRIDE consists of a number of elements: politicization of law, redistribution as challenge, inclusion of outsiders (including opponents), democratization of law making and adjudication instead of exaggerated trust in experts or seemingly natural consequences, and energization and emotion to counter the emotionality of opponents.