New Delhi - Global Administrative Law Workshop

Although based at NYU's Institute for International Law and Justice, the GAL project involves an increasing number of other academic institutions. Perhaps the longest of these collaborations is with Università La Sapienza in Rome, who have for three years now hosted an annual GAL workshop in Viterbo, Italy (the fourth of which will take place in June 2008). A central goal within the project, however, has been to encourage the active participation of scholars and institutions from developing countries, and to this end a number of conferences co-sponsored with certain institutional partners from such countries have been arranged. The first of these took place in Buenos Aires in March of this year at the University of San Andres (papers are available here).

Continuing this trend, NYU and the Center for Policy Research (CPR) in India are holding a workshop in Delhi on the 5-6 of January 2008, entitled "India, the South and the Shaping of Global Administrative Law". The workshop will address three types of issues: foundational questions, relating to the definition and scope of GAL; questions relating to the impact of global regulation on government decisions in India and the region more broadly; and questions of how domestic practices and institutions can contribute to development of GAL in general.

More concretely, the workshop will deal with issues such as accountability and transparency in the fields of development, conservation and security; the regulation of economic regulators; the role of the news media in providing accountability in global governance; the GAL-related elements of the TRIPS regime; climate change; and the administration of democracy in times of political crisis. As usual, it will include some leading academics, such as B.S. Chimni, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Richard Stewart, Benedict Kingsbury and Simon Chesterman (to name but a few), a group of younger scholars working in the field, and contributions from those engaged in the practical side of the issues raised. A draft programme and a background note are available at present: we hope to make the papers available on the GAL website at some point in early 2008.

Looks like being an extremely worthwhile event, and important in the context of broadening the perspectives that are informing the development of the GAL project. For those who can, get along; for those who can't, we'll make a summary of discussions available here shortly after the event...