Toward Global Administrative Law?

Convened by Benedict Kingsbury & Richard B. Stewart

The colloquium focused on accountability, legality and participation in international governance issues. The aim was to frame an emerging field of global administrative law. This involves international law issues (e.g. accountability of intergovernmental organizations), transnational law issues (e.g. participation in, and accountability of, transnational standard-setting networks of private and public actors), and national administrative law issues. Through class discussion and their own research papers, students considered: accountability and participation under different global regulatory models; the problems for national administrative law of responding to governance decisions where a national agency is simply following rules or policies adopted transnationally or adopted by another state under a mutual recognition arrangement; the possibilities and problems of suing international organizations in national courts; the roles of administrative law in promoting legality within national and international governance systems; the impacts of international treaties such as those of the WTO on national administrative law (including rights to be heard, requirements to give reasons, etc); who should have standing to raise challenges, and who has a legitimate interest in participation, in different global governance regimes.

Public sessions:

January 26
Professor Richard B. Stewart, NYU: U.S. Administrative Law: A Resource for Global Administrative Law? Commentator: Judge Robert Katzmann, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

February 2
Professor Christian Joerges, European University Institute: The Turn to Transnational Governance and its Legitimacy Problems: The Examples of Standardization and Food Safety. Commentator: Richard B. Stewart.

February 9
Professor David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto: Accountability and the Idea of an International Legal Order. Commentator: Katrina Wyman.

February 17
Professor James Salzman, American University : Accountability and Participation in OECD Regulation”: Environment, Business, and Laboratory Standards. Commentator: David Trubek, University of Wisconsin.

February 23
Professor Eyal Benvenisti, University of Tel Aviv : Public Choice and Global Administrative Law. Commentator: Lewis Kornhauser.

March 1

Professors Ruth Grant & Robert Keohane, Duke University: Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics. Commentator: Joseph H.H. Weiler.

March 8

Professor Bronwen Morgan, Oxford University : Local Participation and Global Rule-Making: The Case of Transnational Water Regulation. Commentator: Jake Werksman, Rockefeller Foundation.

March 22

Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton: Accountability in Global Governance Through Transnational Networks. Commentator: Charles Sabel, Columbia University. Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Conclusion

March 29
Professor Martin Shapiro, Berkeley: ‘Deliberative,’ ‘Independent’ Technocracy v. Democratic Politics: Will the Globe Echo the EU? Commentator: Andrew Hurrell, Oxford University. Background reading: Philip Pettit, Two-dimensional Democracy and the International Domain (forthcoming in The Monist).

April 12
Professor Sabino Cassese, University of Rome “La Sapienza”: International Standards for Domestic Administration. Commentator: Nico Krisch , New York University.