This chapter discusses international criminal law (ICL) and distinguishes it from other areas of international law and criminal law. ICL is placed within the general area of international alw and its source doctrine whilst also discussing ICL’s unique nature as an area of criminal law. Critical approaches to ICL are discussed as an increasingly important perspective/approach to shaping debates in ICL.

European Union criminal law as we know it is a product of intensive legal development on both legislative and judicial levels, accompanied by significant changes in the Treaty framework. In this chapter, we will discuss the emergence and nature of harmonisation efforts with an emphasis on especially substantive criminal law. Our claim is that whereas during the Amsterdam era, harmonisation of substantive criminal law was mainly regarded a competence issue, since entering of the Lisbon Treaty together with strengthening of the role of the fundamental rights and human rights in the law of the European Union, the debates concerning European criminal law take place mainly on the level of adjudication. Harmonisation relates not only to the cornerstone principle of mutual recognition but has a link as well to the debates on increased supranationalism as expressed by ‘Taricco saga’ and the establishment of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

In an era that is often characterized as one of a growing convergence of the laws governing criminal activities in different countries, the issue-area of cannabis policy undergoes processes of fragmentation and polarization. Some countries continue to criminalize all forms of medical and recreational uses of cannabis. Others have sought to “separate the market” for cannabis from that of other drugs by decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana, authorizing its use for medical purposes, and establishing administrative measures for taxing and regulating the commercial sale of the drug. This chapter explores the causes and consequences of the decline of the transnational legal order of cannabis prohibition. It shows how the erosion of the regulatory capacities of this transnational legal order reflects deep-seated political conflicts over the legitimacy of prohibition norms in this field. It analyzes the ways in which conflicting regulatory approaches become institutionalized as a consequence of the structural mismatch between the actors framing the meaning of cannabis prohibition norms at the international level and the actors implementing these norms in national and local contexts. Finally, the chapter shows how this transnational legal order has created path-dependent trajectories of legal change that continue to shape domestic drug policies in various countries.

The studies in this book examine the processes through which transnational criminal justice norms are being formed and institutionalized, migrate across jurisdictions, and shape the practices and attitudes of national and local actors. They assess the driving forces behind the emergence of new mechanisms of transnational legal ordering in diverse areas of criminal justice, analyze their limits and their effects, and evaluate their implications for our understanding of the nature of criminal law as a social and political institution. This introductory chapter sets the analytic framework for these inquiries. Drawing on the book’s case studies, we explore a number of theses for explaining why illicit activities and law enforcement practices become objects of transnational regulation. We consider how competition among and resistance within transnational legal orders shape and constrain their formation, institutionalization, and consequences. Finally, we highlight the book’s contribution to the broader project of developing a socio-legal theory of transnational legal ordering and to scholarly debates regarding the impact of globalization on criminal justice policies.

To date, “transnational criminal law” has been the dominant paradigm for explaining and mapping rules on corruption in the international legal literature. This Chapter details the limits of transnational criminal conceptions of “anticorruption” through a study of nascent changes to Australian corporate foreign bribery law. Drawing on primary and secondary documentary sources, it shows that the proposed (but for now lapsed) reforms are only partially transnational, as that term is understood in “TCL” theory. Likewise, multilateral suppression conventions and related soft laws were but one impetus for the suggested amendments. Rather, as the transnational legal ordering literature suggests, a recursive process appears to have been at work between international organizations and local legislators, as well as transnational non-state actors. This process was marked, it seems, by moments of borrowing from the US and UK. However, it was also punctuated by themes of modernization, efficiency, and reputation. In addition, if settled, the amendments would result, not just in changes to national criminal law, but also the extension of “new” – and controversial – techniques of governance.