Legal Certainty in a Contemporary Context

"This book addresses issues concerning the shifting contemporary meaning of legal certainty. The book focuses on exploring the emerging tensions that exist between the demand for legal certainty and the challenges of regulating complex, late modern societies. The book is divided into two parts: the [second] part focusing on debates around legal certainty at the national level, with a primary emphasis on criminal law; and the [first] part focusing on debates at the transnational level, with a primary emphasis on the regulation of transnational commercial transactions. In the context of legal modernity, the principle of legal certainty (the idea that the law must be sufficiently clear to provide those subject to legal norms with the means to regulate their own conduct and to protect against the arbitrary use of public power) has operated as a foundational rule of law value. Even though it has not always been fully realized, legal certainty has functioned as a core value and aspiration that has structured normative debates throughout political modernity, both at a national and international level. In recent decades, however, legal certainty has come under increasing pressure from a nu