Mathematical models based on evolutionary and ecological principles can help explain and predict variation in political organization and inequality across societies. This chapter introduces five major themes in human behavioral ecology that contribute to this goal. First, vertical power relationships between dominants and subordinates arise when resources are economically defensible and environmental or social circumscription limits outside options. Second, inequality increases when resources are durable and can be accumulated and inherited between generations within lineages. Third, egalitarian leveling can limit dominance behavior and inequality when there is a high degree of social interdependence, contributions to cooperation can be voluntarily given or withdrawn, or leveling coalitions facilitate collective bargaining. Fourth, organizational hierarchies are favored when they provide net benefits to group members compared to more egalitarian alternatives; inequality within these hierarchies is limited by the ability to replace aggrandizing leaders or move between groups. Finally, large-scale territorial hierarchies such as states and empires arise under conditions of escalating competition between groups over concentrated and defensible resources, such as high-quality agricultural land. The ecological parameters highlighted by these models define a multidimensional space of possibilities for human political organization and inequality.

The introductory chapter outlines the need for a rethink of territory. Beneath the surface of international and transnational discourses about globalisation and global governance is a conceptual and theoretical indeterminacy deriving from the, often unperceived, conflicting nature of the spaces of globalisation and the spaces of sovereignty. Where global law and governance are discussed, the old statocentric conceptions of spatiality provide the governing model, dominating such that if there is no state-territory, it is asumed there is no territory at all. There is tension between theories of a system with an overly determined spatial logic to ones without much account of space. There is little discussion about where functions go nor of the logics of the spaces in which they are exercised. The spaces of reterritorialisation are missing. As a result, functions exercised ‘beyond’ state territories appear to ‘float free’ of the highly specific territorialised legal order. Many theories cannot account for reterritorialisation because the territories of non-state actors are invisible to international legal thought because its orthodox spatial imaginary only makes visible state spaces.

Chapter 4 discusses applicable laws and rules as well as various concepts in international arbitration such as delocalization, territoriality, lex arbitri and lex mercatoria. The chapter considers various choice of law issues that arise when parties fail to chose the governing law of the contract or of the arbitration clause or if they do not choose the seat of the arbitration.. Although the arbitrator has a duty to apply the proper law, the application of the laws and rules of an arbitration is a complex process. Arbitrators have broad discretion, which is, however, limited in number of ways such as by mandatory laws, party autonomy, international principles, best practices, and by the duty to try to render an enforceable award. In the book, the author includes insights from a number of international arbitrators and counsel, who tell firsthand about their own experiences of arbitration and their views of best practices. Throughout the book, the principles of arbitration are supported and explained by the practice, providing a concrete approach to this important means of resolving disputes.

Particularly in the context of public law, comparative law scholarship typically involves a comparison of legal norms, principles, actors, or legal institutions in different state jurisdictions or across legal traditions. The rise and increasing prevalence of transnational regulators – particularly transnational non-state regulators, but also hybrid and intergovernmental varieties – challenges this methodological default. It invites us to consider the nature of regulation across different legal regimes, some of which might be overlapping, and which, in their claims to authority, might be complementary or conflictual. Acknowledging the presence of transnational regulators within a plurality of legal orders raises questions about how state-centric regulatory institutions at the sub-national, national, regional, or international levels differ from hybrid (state/non-state) and predominantly non-state regimes, whether in terms of their functions (e.g., in terms of standard-setting, enforcement, and dispute resolution) or in terms of their relative claims to authority and political legitimacy. This chapter shows how transnational law poses a conceptual and methodological challenge for comparative lawyers, yet one that reinforces recent innovations in the comparative law field, reflected in this Handbook, that extend comparative law beyond functional comparisons of rules, legal systems, or legal traditions.

Extraterritorial jurisdiction of Chinese law has received increased attention in recent years. On 25 February 2019, President Xi Jinping called for fast-track institution building in extraterritorial jurisdiction of Chinese law. It is the first time that China has made such a bold claim from the very top level of the leadership. This chapter offers a critical examination of Chinese practice in relation to effect-based extraterritorial jurisdiction. It focusses on three fields of law dealing with offensive maps, marine environment protection, and anti-monopoly in which a number of cases have been handled by Chinese executive authorities and courts. It not only looks at how such rules are prescribed in black-letter law but also surveys and reviews how such jurisdiction has been enforced in practice. It attempts to evaluate how successful is China’s approach towards effect-based extraterritorial jurisdiction and to offer some insights into the future development of this significant area of Chinese law.

The chapter opens the analysis of social structure in the transition from the CAPE to the modern eras by reviewing the primary institutions carried over from the CAPE era into the transition, seeing which became obsolete, and which adapted to the new conditions and survived. It constrasts the relative simplicity and straightforwardness of the material developments during this period to the complexity, contradictions and turbulence of the social structure.

The chapter continues the look into the near future by surveying the whole range of social institutions in play. It discusses the robustness of the institutions that define and legitimise the state; the ongoing strength of religion in the face of challenges from science and secular ideologies; the fluctuating fortunes of the market in relation to economic nationalism; the rather partial victory of human equality over inequality; and the rising importance within the social structure of humankind of environmental stewardship in relation to other institutions.

Under public international law, a State has a right to exercise jurisdiction. States are expected to show restraint when attempting to regulate a situation with foreign elements. The research outlines territory- and personality-based permissive principles of jurisdiction. EU data protection provisions that lend themselves to extraterritorial application fall into the subjective territoriality, objective territoriality, passive personality, effects doctrine and potentially protective principles of jurisdiction. The provisions do not come under any one of these principles, but rather an interpretation of several of them. The applicable law articles in the General Data Protection Regulation could most plausibly constitute the objective territoriality (where an act is terminated) and passive personality (the nationality of a victim) principles. Whilst there appears to be a shift from territory to personality, for example, by referring to data processing in the context of activities ‘in the Union’ or individuals ‘subject to the jurisdiction of’ rather than data processing in the context of the activities ‘on the territory of a Member State’ or ‘in the territory of’ each state party’, to justify the exercise of jurisdiction, territory is still necessary to trigger the application of jurisdiction in the online sphere.

Solomon Islands has often been seen as exemplifying wider concerns regarding customary land tenure, economic development and political instability in the southwest Pacific. Locals express concern regarding inequality in land control at multiple scales, while aid donors urge people to register land as a means to increase legal certainty, build peace and render land more ’marketable’. This chapter situates debates about land in Solomon Islands within wider global debates regarding customary tenure, gender inequality and state regulation. It highlights a long-standing divide in feminist debates, between those who perceive land tenure in terms of a hierarchically ordered and gendered ‘bundle of rights’, and those who perceive land as subject to fluid, negotiable claims. Drawing insights from legal geography, political ecology and feminist scholarship on legal pluralism, it suggests that a focus on the ways in which ‘access’ to resources is transformed into state-sanctioned ‘property’ recognises that property is negotiable while also highlighting factors that contribute to inequality. This approach also directs attention to the role of scholars in the formation of property.

The absence and presence of state law was central to the ways in which the colonial project was conceived, enacted and legitimated in the southwest Pacific, and this chapter traces the key ways in which questions of land, property and territory were contested across the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. It demonstrates first, that property disputes formed part of a suite of territorialising projects in which a range of actors competed to delimit and assert control over a geographic area and in so doing, constitute their political authority. Second, territorial struggles generated present legal pluralities in which claims to land are legitimated not only by reference to kastom and the state, but also Christianity. Third, the chapter demonstrates that people were very differently positioned to navigate the new social worlds established by the colonial administration and churches. From the outset of the colonial period, the language of state law and the practices of British administrators tended to consolidate particular idealisations of masculine authority, enabling a small number of men to extend their authority while remaining largely inaccessible to the majority of the population.

Solomon Islanders often refer to the idea that women may not, cannot and do not speak about land matters, and it is clear that the recursive constitution of property and authority not only sediments land control, but state norms and institutions, as (hyper)masculine domains. Yet it is equally clear that women do ‘speak’, and this chapter focuses on collaborative efforts to disrupt dominant understandings of property, territory and political authority and assert more expansive practices. This chapter argues that first, an analytical emphasis on state-sanctioned property reinforces the dominant portrayal of gender relations in the region, according to which women are silenced and victims of their culture and religion, and reproduces material inequalities. Second, the political strategies actually used by women, which appear to resonate elsewhere in the region, suggest that custom and Christianity provide greater scope to contest the terms of property, territory and authority than is generally recognised. This has important implications for understanding the ways in which property might be challenged and re-formed.