Review Essay

• Shaffer, Gregory

Abstract

<sec><st>Abstract</st> Nico Krisch. Beyond Constitutionalism: The Pluralist Structure of Postnational Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. 330. £50. ISBN: 9780199228317. <it>This article critiques Nico Krisch’s</it> Beyond Constitutionalism: The Pluralist Structure of Postnational Law. <it>The book’s primary foil is the turn to rethinking the international legal order in constitutionalist terms. Its contrasting normative vision is a post-national, pluralist one in which there is no legal centre or hierarchy. This vision, although less ambitious than the constitutional programme, is nonetheless quite radical, and shares more with most constitutionalist visions than it acknowledges. Krisch’s critique of his constitutionalist foil could be more radical than it is, and the article provides arguments for such a critique. Nonetheless, the essay finds that Krisch’s</it> post-national <it>vision is also too radical for the world outside Europe in being grounded in a European experience, as reflected in his case studies. The article contends that a framework addressing </it>transnational <it>legal ordering in which states continue to play a central role is superior, given the ongoing centrality of the nation state in governance.</it> <it>The article also finds that Krisch’s normative framework fails to address variation in its evaluation of institutional alternatives in which some hierarchy at times is preferable. Krisch’s vision is pluralist all the way through, while there are strong pragmatist arguments to be more context-specific in prescriptions.</it> </sec>