Transnational Spaces: Norms and Legitimacy

More than a decade ago, then Professor (now Dean) Harold Hongju Koh delivered the Roscoe Pound Lecture at the University of Nebraska College of Law. Entitled Transnational Legal Process, the lecture described a "theory and practice of how public and private actors... interact in a variety of public and private, domestic and international fora to make, interpret, and ultimately, internalize rules of transnational law." Koh's primary purpose was to answer the question that has occupied many international law scholars: why do almost all nations obey almost all principles of international law almost all of the time? He argued that the traditional answer-that nations obey based on interest and identity-is only partly right. Transnational legal process provides a more complete picture.

According to Koh, "[a]s transnational actors interact, they create patterns of behavior and generate norms of external conduct which they in turn internalize."