The structure of the global governance system has undergone significant changes in the past few years. From a system governed primarily by global public law institutions established through multilateral treaties, it has metamorphosed into a hybrid field in which a plethora of public, private, and semi-public institutions interact in various ways. The shift to a hybrid global governance architecture presents a complex challenge for legal and political theory, with immense policy implications. In the present article, I respond to this challenge by developing a new model of transnational legal authority, which conceptualizes it as an emergent, network-based phenomenon. According to this model, the emergence of transnational networked authority is dependent on the existence of a multi-layered structure of strongly connected transnational regimes. Key factors in the emergence of networked authority are the normative and compliance synergies that arise through the densification of links across the network. I examine in this context the linkage between the sociological and the jurisprudential aspects of the authority of private transnational regulatory regimes, and develop the idea of ‘network grounding’, which emphasizes the relational structure of private transnational legality. I illustrate the thesis by reviewing findings from a network analysis of transnational corporate social responsibility networks.

One of the most difficult challenges of mature legal systems is the need to balance the conflicting demands of stability and flexibility. The demand for flexibility is at odds with the principle of impartiality, which is considered a cornerstone of the rule of law. In the present article, I explore the way in which the law copes with this dilemma by developing the idea of tolerance of incoherence. I argue that tolerance of incoherence emerges from the interplay between the inferential and lexical-semantic rules that determine the meaning of legal speech acts. I base this argument on an inferential model of speech acts, which I develop through a discussion of graded speech acts, and on the idea that the use of speech acts is governed by multiple and potentially conflicting conventions. I show how this tolerance allows the law to resolve the tension between dynamism and traditionality, and discuss its sociological and moral implications.

Our lives are permeated by various forms of legality, produced by multiple bodies - both statist and non-statist. The pervasive presence of non-statist, soft law schemes in the contemporary society poses a challenge for legal theory: how to conceptualize legal-like structures that evolve outside the boundaries of the state and are able nonetheless to exert significant normative power? Understanding this phenomenon requires, I argue, a new model of law that will not be bounded by the binary (either/or) structure of traditional jurisprudence and sociology of law. I respond to this challenge by developing a degree-theoretic model of legal-normativity which I term "fuzzy law". This model offers a new conceptual vocabulary for thinking about soft law as a social phenomenon. The model draws on three main theoretical sources: the theory of complementary pairs, fuzzy-set theory, and defeasible reasoning. I examine the jurisprudential and sociological implications of the fuzzy law model through a discussion of the dialectics of reasoning with fuzzy rules and an exploration of the coordination dynamics of quasi-legal systems.

The main objective of this article is to develop a better understanding of the structure of transnational regulatory scientific institutions (RSIs). We will argue that the hybrid political-legal-epistemic nature of RSIs creates a continual tension between their hierarchical and policy-driven structure and the paradigms of objectivity, parallelism and non-centralism that characterize science. The article examines the way in which RSIs cope with the challenge of maintaining their epistemic/political authority against the tensions generated by their hybrid structure. The article focuses on three institutions: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), and the International Competition Network (ICN), and examines how this challenge manifests itself in the context of these three bodies. The article links the discussion of hybrid authority with the problem of scientific uncertainty. It concludes with a discussion of the optimal design of RSIs.

In designing a recycling policy, the regulator must choose among multiple instruments. Our study seeks to address the linkages between the choice of regulatory instruments and institutional frameworks, people's intrinsic motivation, and various attitudinal measures. We examined the behavioral repercussions of several instruments that are used widely in recycling regulation, using an experimental survey on a representative sample of the Israeli population (N = 1,800 participants). Our findings suggest that the design of recycling policies should be sensitive to the framing effects of varied regulatory instruments and to the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on the desirability and efficacy of the law. In particular, we point out the potential regulatory advantage of using deposit schemes over other instruments and of using private organizations as regulatory agents. Drawing on these findings, we discuss the potential value of using differentiated regulatory policies to provide incentives for recycling in societies characterized by broad heterogeneity in levels of intrinsic motivation.

This article examines the institutional impact of environmental management systems (EMSs), focusing on ISO 14001. It develops a pluralistic framework for thinking about the dynamic of corporate self-regulation that we term the polyphonic model. It argues that the adoption of ISO 14001 can move the firm into a new equilibrium trajectory, which enmeshes together environmental and economic goals and reflects greater sensitivity to ecological concerns. There is a positive reciprocal cycle between the pro-environmental structural changes induced by ISO 14001 and the employees' attitudes toward the firm and the environment. In order to examine ISO 14001 institutional impact, we conducted a series of interviews with managers and administered questionnaires to employees in 24 Israeli firms with and without certification. The findings indicate that the perceived environmental commitment of certified firms was higher than that of noncertified firms and was higher among employees that perceived the EMS as more highly integrated in the firm. Perceptions of the standard's integration were also found to be positively correlated with personal environmental commitment. The results also indicate that the increase in the firm's environmental commitment was positively associated with employees' organizational citizenship behavior within certified firms. Further indications of the pro-environmental dynamic induced by ISO 14001 were found in the in-depth interviews.

This article develops a general critique of the economic approach to environmental regulation, drawing on the insights of systems theory. It highlights, first, the problematic of subjugating the regulatory system to a single purpose – which in the context of environmental economics is interpreted as the utilitarian maximization of collective welfare. Second, it questions the teleological pretence of the regulatory project as it is configured in the economic literature. It highlights in this context the problem of trans-systemic incompatibilities, which impede the incorporation of economic ideas into the systems of law and politics. Environmental economics in both its normative and sociopolitical strands, fails to provide a convincing response to this dilemma. The article discusses two examples of the reconstruction of economic ideas within the legal and political domains, drawing on the EU and US regulatory experience. This twofold critique of the economic approach can be extended, it is argued, to every regulatory project with far-reaching teleological ambitions. The article applies this critique to some alternative regulatory visions, such as self-regulation, reflexive law and responsive regulation, noting in this context the limitations of systems theory itself. It concludes with a discussion of the role of intuition in regulatory decision-making.