The institutional network of law and state power peculiar to sovereign national states is in danger of disintegrating in the face of economic globalisation - such is the conclusion of numerous diagnoses of the present condition. At the same time, recent publications articulate the hope that supranational institutions will form which will be able to guarantee the rule of law across national boundaries. Working from a philosophical or legal perspective, the individual papers examine the transformation of sovereignty, tendencies towards international systems of law, the criteria for global social justice, and the development of supranational forms of constitution.