Transnationalisation and legal actors: Legitimacy in Question

The contours of legitimacy have been mapped with an emphasis on the legitimacy seeking practices or delegitimation attempts of actors like supranational, intergovernmental and international organisations, states and courts, and non-state actors who operate in transnational settings. The United Nations (UN) focuses on establishing procedural legitimacy by providing the global public access to participation in defining sustainability norms and steps for implementation. The analysis is driven by the argument that the UN is supposed to deliver substantive justice, that is norms and rules that can be used to evaluate the legitimacy of actions and practices of other actors. The norm-creation process that takes place in the private sphere provides important lessons for discussion of legitimacy-seeking practice and delegitimation attempts. A traditional distinction is made between descriptive legitimacy and normative legitimacy. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.