The Shifting Allocation of Authority in International Law is a collection of essays originally presented at a conference held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in June 2006 in honour of Professor Ruth Lapidoth. The book itself, volume 19 in the collection of Studies in International Law and published by Hart Publishing in 2008, is divided into four parts, totalling 15 essays from academics and practitioners from various legal backgrounds. It also includes a comprehensive introduction by the editors, Yuval Shany and Tomer Broude. The book aims to present the evolution of power allocation in international law by focusing on the notions of sovereignty, supremacy and subsidiarity. It is an analytical exercise of the topic based on Professor Lapidoth's scholarship on sovereignty. The case-by-case approach she chose to follow in the various areas of her work—law of the sea, the issue of autonomy, and the Middle East peace process, etc—allowed her to advocate the application of specific solutions to particular situations and adopt the view of a functional rather than formal sovereignty, something which diverges from the traditional dualism between national and international law. The book contains both essays adopting her pragmatic approach by analysing particular situations and also more general works discussing general principles relating to the allocation of power.

‘The Structures of International Law,’ the first part of the book, presents a collection of analyses of the international legal system and its contemporary issues, such as the fragmentation of law and the decentralisation of governance. These studies concentrate on the relevance of creating general principles to solve the issue of power allocation in international law. As such they form a useful introductory debate to the subject in hand.

‘International Authority and the State’, the second part of the book, focuses on the notion of sovereignty and its effects on the legitimacy of the international system. In ‘State Sovereignty, International Legality and Moral Disagreement’, Brad Roth defends the moral justification of state sovereignty and suggests that sovereign equality, by allowing ‘bounded pluralism’ between the various actors of the international community, offers both a moral and pragmatic response to the international community's inherent disagreements. In ‘Democracy without Sovereignty’, authors Robert Howse and Kalypso Nicolaidis take the same approach, also defending the concept of sovereignty. However, they contend that it is shaped by new relationships of power allocation that have transformed the traditional horizontal system of international law into a vertical system. They stress that this complex view of the international system is necessary in order to grant better legitimacy to global governance. The influence of Professor Lapidoth's functional sovereignty can be seen in the various theses in this part of the book, as authors refuse to consider state sovereignty as an obsolete concept but rather stress the need for its reshaping in order to reflect the diversity of international actors and reaffirm the legitimacy of the international system.

The third part of the book, entitled ‘Allocation of Authority Among Judicial Bodies’, focuses on the role of the judiciary in the allocation of power. There, the authors borrow principles of national law (such as proportionality) and private international law (the recognition of foreign judgments, for example) in an attempt to solve the complexity of the international system. These original studies, which echo Professor Lapidoth's pragmatic approach, challenge the reader to expand the scope of the issue of power allocation beyond the traditional dynamic of relationships between the local and the global level.

The last part of The Shifting Allocation of Authority in International Law considers ‘The Allocation of Authority in Specific Normative Contexts’, presenting case-studies of the theoretical issue under evaluation. ‘The Euro-Med Case’ by Guy Harpaz examines, with concern, the process of harmonization of laws created by the European Union's regional arrangements with its neighbours and their negative implications on state sovereignty. Harpaz proposes the creation instead of a form of regional subsidiarity as a means to moderate the approximation of law. Looking at the area of international economic law, Moshe Hirsch analyses, in ‘Conflicting Obligations in International Law’, the jurisprudence of investment tribunals and describes, with the use of case-law examples, the factors behind their cautious approach to non-investment treaties. Andre Nollkaemper tackles the other side of power allocation in examining the responsibility that comes with authority. His case study of multi-level accountability reveals both the complementarity of national and international processes and their inherent risk of creating a gap in responsibility. The last essay of the book by Malcolm Shaw provides an elaborate series of examples of the exercise of ‘Territorial Administration by Non-Territorial Sovereigns’ in modern international law. These examples cover various contemporary manifestations of the exercise of sovereignty, and the essay, by choosing to study a number of case-scenarios, closes perfectly a work devoted to the complexity of power allocation and to the need for a pragmatic and specific approach to its resolution.

The variety of authors and topics in The Shifting Allocation of Authority in International Law works to show, on the one hand, a very broad and general approach to the issue of power allocation in the international community today and, on the other hand, a more detailed and in-depth analysis of specific issues. The mix of theoretical analyses and practical solution-offerings might be disconcerting to some but their complementarity definitely deepens the value of the study.