Transnational, post-national, supranational, and trans-governmental: these are all elements of a new international order in which crime has taken on multiple new roles. As its effect, operation, and outcome spill over borders, a change has occurred not just in the way global crimes are regulated but also in the people who regulate them. Adán Nieto Martín is a professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain and has a wide experience in the field of criminal and corporate law. Through this book, he has highlighted the changing role of the state as a stakeholder in the international sphere. It is premised on the twin understandings that the rigidities of the state-territory relationship have been challenged coupled with the incoming of new actors on the world stage, thus changing the idea of security and further legitimizing this reorganization. These new actors have been identified as a network of states, international organizations, government networks, and private stakeholders such as multinational corporations, standardization bodies, and non-governmental organizations that fully utilize the power of soft law through their influence and reputation. Private actors can bring in the much-needed expertise required in lawmaking today, and the author has outlined the value of their technical legitimacy and global reach.
The author welcomes the entry of new players into global governance. Taking the example of the World Bank Sanctions Systems, he opines that its approach towards criminal justice policy has been “one of the most significant in the last decade” (p. 37). Nevertheless, his prose expresses caution against the erosion of key pillars of criminal justice or governance such as procedural fairness, transparency, legitimacy, and deliberative democracy, which can often be overlooked by these entities whose organization and operation are unlike an adjudicatory or legislative system. Whether criminal law matters are transnational or national or public or private, there must be adherence to the principles of fair trial and due process. Thus, while the author has lauded the potential of self-regulating mechanisms of multinational corporations, his work exhibits pragmatism when he stresses the need for criminal justice in its true sense.
It is this kind of nuanced analysis of the multifaceted aspects of the entry of new players into global criminal lawmaking and regulation that makes this book an important addition to the existing literature in this field. His interesting classification of crimes, relating their nature with territoriality, adds to the comprehensiveness of his work. The book must not be mistaken as an attempt to understand all existing procedures of rulemaking related to every international crime. Its relevance lies in its bird's eye view analysis of the universe of global criminal law and the entities governing it in its current stage of evolution. This book is apt for students, scholars, judges, lawyers, academicians, and even public officials who wish to gain insight into global criminal law and its transforming governance.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
