Jurisdiction

This open-access chapter treats jurisdiction as the legal form through which international law allocates authority: who may prescribe rules, decide disputes, enforce consequences, and speak the law. Its contribution is doctrinal and structural at once. It teaches the classic forms and grounds of state jurisdiction—prescriptive, adjudicative, and enforcement; territoriality, nationality, protective jurisdiction, effects, passive personality, and universality—while showing that these categories are never only technical. The chapter reconstructs jurisdiction’s colonial and postcolonial history, from the Doctrine of Discovery and the mandate system to indigenous title, resource control, and contemporary struggles over investment arbitration, intellectual property, public health, and digital sovereignty. It examines universal jurisdiction as both a promise of accountability and a site of selective enforcement; maps authority beyond the state in the Security Council, WTO, IMF, ISDS, climate regimes, and platform regulation; and treats conflicts of jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, applicable law, and foreign judgments as part of the same contest over legal reach. Throughout, it asks not only which connecting factor applies, but what distribution of power, capacity, and remedy that claim of authority produces. Published freely on thetextbookproject.org, it may be read, downloaded, cited, and assigned in courses under the Creative Commons licence stated on the cover.