"Drawing on examples from the fields of international commercial arbitration and international human rights, in particular, and also on trade, intellectual property and governance, this article explores the processes through which transnational norms are created and legitimated. The article rejects approaches that presume an international consensus around norms or simply the imposition of Northern norms and technologies on the South, showing instead how the fields are developed, the advantages that favour ideas and approaches that are credible in the North, and also how limited openings to individuals from the South subtly modify the norms—which in turn reinforces their legitimacy. The article also shows that legal processes, courts and court-like approaches serve to capture both the hierarchies of the field and the processes that can allow a slow evolution that produces some change—but no challenge to the basic orientation."

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