Legal Orders and Their Manifestation: The Operation of the International Commercial and Financial Legal Order and its Lex Mercatoria

Abstract

This article explores the formation of a new transnational legal order in the professional sphere and discusses the bottom-up law formation process in commerce and finance in that order driven and maintained by globalisation and its law creating and sustaining force. The modern lex mercatoria is the private law of that order and its different sources of law and the hierarchy between them is explained as well as the remaining competition with the law in domestic legal orders relevant in particular when international transactions come on shore in such orders and their public policies are engaged.