From Transnational Relations to Transnational Laws. Northern European Laws at the Cross Roads

This book approaches law as a process embedded in transnational personal, religious, communicative and economic relationships that mediate between international, national and local practices, norms and values. It uses the concept "living law" to describe the multiplicity of norms manifest in transnational moral, social or economic practices that transgress the territorial and legal boundaries of the nation-state. Focusing on transnational legal encounters located in family life, diasporic religious institutions and media events in countries like Norway, Sweden, Britain and Scotland, it demonstrates the multiple challenges that accelerated mobility and increased cultural and normative diversity is posing for Northern European law. For in this part of the world, as elsewhere, national law is challenged by a mixture of expanding human rights obligations and unprecedented cultural and normative pluralism enhanced by expanding global communication and market relations. As a consequence, transnationalization of law appears to create homogeneity, fragmentation and ambiguity, expanding space for some actors while silencing others. Through the lens of a variety of important contemporary subjects, the authors thus engage with the nature of power and how it is accommodated, ignored or resisted by various actors when transnational practices encounter national and local law. Contents: Preface; Introduction: transnational law in the making, Anne Hellum, Shaheen Sardar Ali and Anne Griffiths; Part I Family Relations, Transnational, National and Local Sites of Contestation: Syrian transnational families and family law, Annika Rabo; Cyber-stork children and the Norwegian Biotechnology Act: regulating procreative practice – law and its effects, Marit Melhuus; The global equality standard meets Norwegian sameness, Anne Hellum; Taking what law where and to whom? Legal literacy as transcultural 'law-making' in Oslo, Anne Hellum and Farhat Taj. Part II Transnational Religious Rule: Muslims in the European Diaspora: Behind the cyberspace veil: online fatawa on women's family rights, Shaheen Sardar Ali; Islamic jurisprudence and transnational flows: exploring the European Council for Fatwa and Research, Lena Larsen; Cultural translations and legal conflict: Muslim women and the Shari'a councils in Britain, Samia Bano. Part III Transnational Modes of Governance: Family, Market and Media: Local responses to national and transnational law: a view from the Scottish children's hearings system, Anne Griffiths and Randy F. Kandel; Business lawyers in the age of globalization – a comparison of the situation in Norway and Germany, Knut Papendorf; Regulating cyberspace: modes of production, modes of regulation and modes of resistance, Abdul Paliwala; Post September 11 legal regulations of the Hawala system: the predicament of Somalis in Norway, Sarvendra Tharmalingam and Mohamed Husein Gaas with Thomas Hylland Eriksen. Part IV Transnational Media and Freedom of Expression: Human Rights Paradoxes: Differing standards of free expression: clashes of laws during the cartoon controversy?, Elisabeth Eide; The globalization of the insult: freedom of expression meets cosmopolitan thinking, Thomas Hylland Eriksen; Index.