History shows that humans attempt, with some success, to control what was previously uncontrollable. Now more than ever, globalisation and its technological manifestations attest to humans surprising older generations by increasing their control over, for example, time and space, the atom, health and food production. Yet globalisation has a history with roots deeper than the topsoil of its late twentieth-century receipt into popular language. The roots penetrate to a core reservoir of philosophical, theological and legal aspirations. Thought about in this way, these aspirations appear never to leave us even though, technologically, humans can make such incredible advances over their physical constraints (with good and bad implications).

This book explores the recurring, deeper level problems of authority under-lying law in ‘the West’, with a sense of hopefulness for the future, but also with some anxiety about the way law is conceived and used today. The conviction emerged during the composition of this book that a major theme of the Western legal tradition is that humans invest their constitutions and legal discourses with vital visions for the future which are too easily forgotten when revolutionary urgencies are perceived to have passed. Today, it seems important to be aware of this decadent potential of law. Rights can be proclaimed as ‘global’, ‘fundamental’ or ‘universal’ in the service of partisan objectives without thought for the bloody signposts of their evolution. If those historical signposts are forgotten or worse still ignored, what foundation can there be for the changes which must come in the future? In making choices, what confidence can be available?