: Global control without a state?Lex vigilatoria

The chapter presents and discusses the development of a number of new transnational surveillance and information systems in Europe. It relates their development to the question of whether we here have an example of ‘law without a state’. Guenther Teubner's notion of a ‘lex mercatoria’, a system of global contract law developed by large law firms and international business lawyers, is paralleled by a ‘lex vigilatoria’, a system of global control in the making. The chapter provisionally concludes that the ties to the nation-state of an integrated surveillance system are increasingly diluted.