Complementing Comparison: Renewing Analytical Legal Theory to Meet the Explanatory Challenge of Globalisation

It is now beyond question that legal theory risks parochialism and diminished interest if it fails to understand the implications of globalisation for law. Historically state-focused analytical legal theory, once a dominant force in jurisprudential debate, is thought by some to be especially likely to fade into irrelevance. William Twining has been a particularly acute critic of analytical legal theory, offering arguments whose force is amplified by Twining's long history of work from within that tradition. Twining argues that analytical legal theory's state-centred approach and analytic method of conceptual analysis render it incapable of taking globalisation seriously. In response, we argue that analytical legal theorists might well take Twining's criticisms of them not as the end of their relevance, but instead as a challenge to explain how their methods and subject matter are capable of renewal and expansion. In this paper we take some initial steps towards showing how this might be done.