The events are coming thick and fast these days, but this one I find particularly interesting, for at least three reasons: 1) it's at Edinburgh University, my alma mater; 2) I've been asked to give the keynote address; and 3) most importantly, by far, this to my knowledge is the first GAL event to be organized that has not involved the participation of the Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ) and/or the Institute for Research on Public Administration (IRPA) in Rome.
The event will be held on Tuesday the 16th of June 2009, is being run "by PhD students for PhD students" from the Edinburgh University International Law Discussion Group, and is sponsored by the Edinburgh Law School Postdoctoral Research Committee and the Scottish Centre for International Law. The idea is to give doctoral researchers an opportunity to present short (20 minute) papers on anything GAL-related, and is not limkited to those working in the legal field, but is expressly extended to those working on philosophy, history, sociology, etc. ; anyone who would like to present a paper is invited to submit a 250 word abstract by the 20th of April 2009 to edinburghGAL09@gmail.com. More information is available here. It should, I think, be an very worthwhile event.
If anyone is interested, below is an abstract of the paper that I am planning to present (although it may of course change between now and then):
Globalising the Discourse of Public Law: Constitutionalism, Democracy and the "Emergence" of Global Administrative Law:
The central purpose of this paper is to discuss the rhetoric of "emergence" within the field of global administrative law (GAL). The GAL Project has arisen out of – indeed largely in response to – the conditions of radical plurality and fragmentation that currently characterise the field of global regulatory governance. At the same time, however, the goals of the project have long been framed in terms of unity, as is illustrated by the rhetoric not simply of the singular form of the term “law”, but also of a unitary “global administrative space” within which it is to be applicable. This fundamental unity is at once affirmed and deferred, however, in the basic claim GAL is as yet only “emerging”; which, of course, begs the question of precisely what will have come into being when we can properly say that GAL has “emerged”. This is the issue that I seek to address in this paper.
It does so by comparing the development of two other - related but distinct - projects that seek to "globalise" public law discourses: constitutionalism and democracy. I identify three analytic "coordinates" in each project - the domestic, the extranational, and the global - and argue that the first two interact dialectically in the production of the third, thus justifying the use of the term "global". I illustrate some of the ways in which this is happening in GAL, leading to a relative homogenisation that speaks to the unitary rhetoric employed within the project; and argue that GAL remains a more realistic proposition than either global constitutionalism or global democracy precisely because the latter two project lack any sort of developed extranational coordinate.
The event will be held on Tuesday the 16th of June 2009, is being run "by PhD students for PhD students" from the Edinburgh University International Law Discussion Group, and is sponsored by the Edinburgh Law School Postdoctoral Research Committee and the Scottish Centre for International Law. The idea is to give doctoral researchers an opportunity to present short (20 minute) papers on anything GAL-related, and is not limkited to those working in the legal field, but is expressly extended to those working on philosophy, history, sociology, etc. ; anyone who would like to present a paper is invited to submit a 250 word abstract by the 20th of April 2009 to edinburghGAL09@gmail.com. More information is available here. It should, I think, be an very worthwhile event.
If anyone is interested, below is an abstract of the paper that I am planning to present (although it may of course change between now and then):
Globalising the Discourse of Public Law: Constitutionalism, Democracy and the "Emergence" of Global Administrative Law:
The central purpose of this paper is to discuss the rhetoric of "emergence" within the field of global administrative law (GAL). The GAL Project has arisen out of – indeed largely in response to – the conditions of radical plurality and fragmentation that currently characterise the field of global regulatory governance. At the same time, however, the goals of the project have long been framed in terms of unity, as is illustrated by the rhetoric not simply of the singular form of the term “law”, but also of a unitary “global administrative space” within which it is to be applicable. This fundamental unity is at once affirmed and deferred, however, in the basic claim GAL is as yet only “emerging”; which, of course, begs the question of precisely what will have come into being when we can properly say that GAL has “emerged”. This is the issue that I seek to address in this paper.
It does so by comparing the development of two other - related but distinct - projects that seek to "globalise" public law discourses: constitutionalism and democracy. I identify three analytic "coordinates" in each project - the domestic, the extranational, and the global - and argue that the first two interact dialectically in the production of the third, thus justifying the use of the term "global". I illustrate some of the ways in which this is happening in GAL, leading to a relative homogenisation that speaks to the unitary rhetoric employed within the project; and argue that GAL remains a more realistic proposition than either global constitutionalism or global democracy precisely because the latter two project lack any sort of developed extranational coordinate.
