Transnational Criminal Law and the Global Rule of Law

Abstract

Over the past three decades many regulatory measures aimed at countering transnational crime have been adopted. This article maps the development of these measures and examines their relationship with the ‘global rule of law’. The article is structured on the basis of a typology of production of transnational criminal law norms and examines the production and implementation of transnational criminal law via: ‘hard law’ global multilateral conventions; regionalism, focusing on the work of the Council of Europe; ‘soft’ or ‘informal’ law, focusing on the Financial Action Task Force; ‘global administrative law’, expressed by the UN Security Council; and supranational, EU, law. The article then focuses on the extraterritorial reach of transnational criminal law and asks whether lessons can be learnt by the operation of the principle in EU criminal law. The article then assesses the impact of this typology of transnational criminal law making on the global rule of law.