How relevant is private international law to contemporary debates about global gov-
ernance that have sprung up within other (legal and non-legal) disciplinary fields?
Despite the contemporary juridification of international politics, private international
law has contributed very little to the global governance debate, remaining remark-
ably silent before the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth and authority in the
world. Under the aegis of the liberal divides between law and politics and between the
public and the private spheres, it has developed a form of epistemological tunnel-vision,
actively providing immunity and impunity to abusers of private sovereignty. On the
other hand, public international law, on the tide of managerialism and fragmentation,
is now increasingly confronted with conflicts articulated as collisions of jurisdiction
and applicable law, among which private or hybrid authorities and regimes now occupy
a significant place.