Forum 7: Globalisation

Chaired by Professor Joost Pauwelyn

If one term has been used to describe the period 1989-2010, it has been ‘globalisation’. What has been the role of international law in the process of globalisation? Has international law been a winner or loser, an instigator or follower, a catalyst or retardant in this process? Has globalisation changed the character of international law and, if so, how? Who has made international law in a globalised world, who have been its beneficiaries and who has been left out? Has globalisation transcended the North-South divide in international law or widened it?

Globalisation and the Third World

PROFESSOR TONY ANGHIE, Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, SJ Quinney School of Law, University of Utah

Abstract:The character and effects of globalization have proven to be contested and controversial. This paper examines globalization from a Third World perspective. It examines how globalization, particularly in its legal form, has affected the Third World, how the Third World has responded to the challenges of globalization, and how globalization raises complex questions about the nature of the Third World itself. It also considers these issues in the context of the changing character of globalization over the last twenty year.

Biography: Tony Anghie’s research interests include public international law, the history and theory of international law, human rights, international economic law and globalization, and Third World Approaches to International Law. He has lectured widely and has been visiting professor at various schools, including the universities of Tokyo, Auckland, Melbourne, and Cornell Law School.

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Multiplication of Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in a Globalised World

PROFESSOR CATHERINE KESSEDJIAN, Professor of International and European Law, Université Panthéon-Assas Paris II

Abstract: In the XXIst century world, international disputes have links with many more States and territories than before. Issues which were traditionally territorial (competition, intellectual property, consumers, labour, etc…) are now becoming transnational. The number of parties involved and their interests are much more numerous and diverse. This is why International law has to adapt. We will show what mechanisms are being used, and those which are in the pipes, which could organise the greater diversity and complexity. We will also show how international law must further adapt to favour better transnational cooperation instead of looking at disputes from the point of view of competition among actors, tribunals, States and legislators.

Biography: Catherine Kessedjian is the Deputy Director of the European College of Paris. She teaches at the University Panthéon-Assas Paris II, where she is the Director of a Master programme in European Law. She is Hauser Global Professor at New York University School of Law where she teaches International Commercial Transactions and a seminar on Rule Making Processes in a Global World. She acts as mediator or arbitrator ad hoc or under the auspices of, among others, ICSID and the ICC. Before joining Paris II, she was Deputy Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law.

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From International Law to Postnational Law

PROFESSOR NICO KRISCH, Professor of International Law, Hertie School of Governance

Abstract: Globalisation has made international law flourish in many ways, most visibly in the WTO context, but in many other areas as well. Growing economic interdependence requires strong tools for international coordination and cooperation, and law has often been a preferred, sometimes an inevitable instrument. As a result, international relations – long seen as anarchic – have become ‘legalised’ to a significant extent, and today, questions of international law attract greater attention than in previous times. Yet what has this success done to international law? In this paper, I argue that it has triggered a transformation of the field that may well herald the demise of international law in its classical structure. This transformation is visible not only in an increasing (and much-debated) fragmentation, but also in growing concerns about the legitimacy of international law and in stronger linkages with domestic law and institutions which are beginning to blur the categorical divide between the different layers. These developments call into question some of the key concepts of international law and in particular its existence as an order separate (and independent) from the thicker grounding of domestic law. This has serious repercussions for the structure of the international legal order and suggests that we enter a phase of postnational, rather than international, law.

Biography: Nico Krisch is a professor of international law at the Hertie School of Governance. Previously, he was a Senior Lecturer at the LSE Law Department, a postdoctoral fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and at NYU Law School, as well as a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Heidelberg. Nico is the author of Selbstverteidigung und kollektive Sicherheit (Self-defense and Collective Security, 2001) and of Beyond Constitutionalism: The Pluralist Structure of Postnational Law (forthcoming, 2010). He is also a member of ESIL’s Executive Board.

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