Beyond the State: Rethinking Private Law

"Private law beyond the state" is a topic that is fashionable, important, and widely discussed. Yet it presents so many different aspects and perspectives that it has, so far, remained remarkably poorly understood. Precisely because globalization moves the law "beyond the state", lawyers find themselves forced to rethink private law and its relation to the state. This volume brings together contributions of leading scholars from the United States, Israel and Germany exploring the topic from different perspectives: legal history, law and economics, legal sociology, private international law, and law and anthropology. They aim at clarifying and structuring current debates, focussing on the historical, conceptual, and epistemological relations between private law and the state as well as on their relevance for legal argument; on the actors involved in processes connecting and dividing private law and the state; and on the fundamental normative questions that result from these processes.