New publication on private military companies...

The issues surrounding the use of private military companies have long been of more than tangential interest to the field of global administrative law; it represents in many ways the paradigmatic example of "outsourcing" of public functions (indeed, the public function par excellence) to private actors.

The recent volume edited by Simon Chesterman and Angelina Fisher, Private Security, Public Order: The Outsourcing of Public Services and its Limits (OUP, November 2009) deals squarely with the GAL aspects of this issue. The introductory chapter is available in full here. This is the second edited volume emerging from New York University School of Law's Institute for International Justice project on private military and security companies; the first, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies, edited by Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt, was published by OUP in 2007.

Here is the (edited) blurb from the new volume:

Private actors are increasingly taking on roles traditionally arrogated to the state. Both in the industrialized North and the developing South, functions essential to external and internal security and to the satisfaction of basic human needs are routinely contracted out to non-state agents. In the area of privatization of security functions, attention by academics and policy makers tends to focus on the activities of private military and security companies, especially in the context of armed conflicts, and their impact on human rights and post-conflict stability and reconstruction...

[This volume] looks at the transformations in the nature of state authority. Drawing on insights from work on privatization, regulation, and accountability in the emerging field of global administrative law, the book examines private military and security companies through the wider lens of private actors performing public functions. In the past two decades, the responsibilities delegated to such actors - especially but not only in the United States - have grown exponentially. The central question of this volume is whether there should be any limits on government capacity to outsource traditionally "public" functions. Can and should a government put out to private tender the fulfillment of military, intelligence, and prison services? Can and should it transfer control of utilities essential to life, such as the supply of water? This discussion incorporates numerous perspectives on regulatory and governance issues in the private provision of public functions, but focuses primarily on private actors offering services that impact the fundamental rights of the affected population.

And the table of contents:

Introduction — Simon Chesterman & Angelina Fisher

Part I: Accountability gaps
1. The privatization of violence — Michael Likosky
2. The responsibility of states — Olivier De Schutter
3. Accountability to whom? — Angelina Fisher

Part II: Lessons from other sectors
4. The privatization continuum — Daphne Barak-Erez
5. Private prisons and the democratic deficit — Alfred C. Aman, Jr.
6. Regulatory choices in the privatization of infrastructure — Mariana Mota Prado
7. Human rights and self-regulation in the apparel industry — Rebecca DeWinter-Schmitt

Part III: Limits
8. Police informants — Jacqueline Ross
9. Intelligence services — Simon Chesterman
10. Peacekeeping — Chia Lehnardt

11. Conclusion: Private security, public order — Simon Chesterman & Angelina Fisher

Essential reading for those working in this particular field, and well worth a look for anyone interested in the public/private nexus within the field of GAL.

Krisch: GAL and the Constitutional Ambition

Nico Krisch, formerly of LSE and now at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and one of the co-authors of the paper that launched the entire GAL project, has a new paper up at SSRN: "Global Administrative Law and the Constitutional Ambition" (a subject that I am hoping to publish something on myself relatively soon). Here's the abstract:

The emergence of global governance has called into question many of the tools and concepts by which the traditionally dichotomous spaces of national and international politics and law were ordered, and various structuring proposals are competing to take their place. In this paper I examine two such proposals - global constitutionalism and global administrative law. Both represent distinct visions of how to approach the challenge, their key difference lying in their respective ambitions: constitutionalist visions set out to describe and develop a fully justified global order, while global administrative law is more limited in scope, focusing on particular elements of global governance and confining itself to the analysis and realisation of narrower political ideals, especially accountability. Such a limited approach raises serious problems, most prominently difficulties in separating 'administrative' from 'constitutional' issues and the risk of legitimising illegitimate institutions. But it also bears significant promise as it allows to focus on, and begin to answer, crucial questions of global governance without leaping to grand designs borrowed from dissimilar contexts and likely at odds with the fluid and diverse character of the postnational polity.

It's an extremely interesting paper for those interested in what we might mean when we talk about the emergence of GAL in a general sense, and how this might differ from the emergence of a global constitution (I have discussed one passage from it already, in an earlier post). Well worth a read.

More on regulatory networks (from Opinio Juris and beyond...)

A quick post to flag some interesting exchanges over at Opinio Juris on the subject of transnational regulatory networks. Firstly, in the context of their regular Virginia Journal of International law symposia, GAL-veteran David Zaring has responded to an article by Pierre-Hugues Verdier on "Transnational Regulatory Networks and Their Limits". Verdier's response can be found here. Also, Ken Anderson has a post up on the same topic (in which he kindly links here), highlighting a further paper of interest on SSRN: Chris Borgen's "A Tale of Two Networks: Terrorism, Transnational Law, and Network Theory".

Well worth a look for those interested in the field.

New article: The Concept of "Law" in GAL, by Benedict Kingsbury

Many apologies for the lack of action on here of late - time flies when you are moving house for the third time in a month. This week will be much more lively, as I try to catch up with all of the important developments that have happened in the last fortnight or so. To get the ball rolling, I wanted to flag a new article just published in the European Journal of International Law by Benedict Kingsbury: "The Concept of 'Law' in Global Administrative Law":

What constitutes ‘law’ in the efflorescent field of ‘global administrative law’? This article argues for a ‘social fact’ conception of law, emphasizing sources and recognition criteria, but it extends this Hartian positivism to incorporate requirements of ‘publicness’ in law. ‘Publicness’ is immanent in public law in national democratic jurisprudence, and increasingly in global governance, where it applies to public entities rather than to identifiable global publics. Principles relevant to publicness include the entity's adherence to legality, rationality, proportionality, rule of law, and some human rights. This article traces the growing use of publicness criteria in practices of judicial-type review of the acts of global governance entities, in requirements of reason-giving, and in practices concerning publicity and transparency. Adherence to requirements of publicness becomes greater, the less the entity is able to rely on firmly established sources of law and legal recognition. ‘Private ordering’ comes within this concept of law only through engagement with public institutions. While there is no single unifying rule of recognition covering all of GAL, there is a workable concept of law in GAL.

The field of global administrative law has, since its inception, faced three recurring challenges of central importance: "Global"? "Administrative"? and, predictably enough, "Law?". Each of these terms is hugely important, and heavily rhetorically charged - and yet none of them have been the subject of much in the way of sustained exposition within the Project to date. It is for this reason that this article is so important: here we have the first sustained attempt - by one of the "founding fathers" of GAL, no less - to account for why the signifier "law" is justified in relation to the Project. I will post some more reflections on this piece later in the week, when i have had a chance to read the final draft; on the basis of the earlier version presented at an NYU colloqiuim earlier this year, however, I can already say that it's well worth a read...

New periodical: Journal of International Peacekeeping

The first issue of the Journal of International Peacekeeping has just been published, and the full text of all the articles are available online.

The Journal of International Peacekeeping is devoted to reporting upon and analyzing international peacekeeping with an emphasis upon legal and policy issues, but is not limited to these issues. Topics include inter alia peacekeeping, peace, war, conflict resolution, diplomacy, international law, international security, humanitarian relief, humanitarian law, and terrorism. The journal is of scholarly quality but is not narrowly theoretical. It provides the interested public - diplomats, civil servants, politicians, the military, academics, journalists, and NGO employees - with an up-to-date source of information on peacekeeping, enabling them to keep abreast of the most important developments in the field. Peacekeeping is treated in a pragmatic light, seen as a form of international military cooperation for the preservation or restoration of international peace and security. Attention is focused not only on UN peacekeeping operations, but other missions as well.

The Journal of International Peacekeeping is the continuation of the journal and yearbook International Peacekeeping, founded in 1994.

Of course, from our perspective, the most interesting issues relate to the accountability of international organizations (and perhaps of private military companies) for the actions of their peacekeepers, whether taken out in furtherence of their mandate, or in blatant abuse of their position. This is a range of topics on which I have blogged a couple of times before. I've only had time for a quick look, but there are a range of articles in the first volume of the Journal of International Peacekeeping that are of interest (and will have to be added to the GAL Bbiliography): One on the role of the UN in promoting the rule of law in post-conflict societies; on the ECtHR's Behrami decision; another on the House of Lords' Al Jedda judgment; and another on the immunity of the UN over Srebrenica before a Dutch court. There are also some relevant reviews of books on UN peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo, legal implications of peacekeeping, on international territorial administration, and on the "unintended consequences" of peacekeeping missions.

That's a lot of GAL for the first issue of a journal. Definitely one worth keeping an eye on...

Participation as a buzzword

William Easterly has an interesting post over at Aid Watch on "buzzwords" in development literature - focusing on an article that discusses the way in which the rhetoric of "participation" is used "to convey good intentions to give the 'power to the poor' over aid affairs, while never in fact ceding any such powers". Richard Stewart has made a similar point about the way in which using "accountability"as a slogan in global governance literature more generally has rendered it of little use analytically. Worth a read, anyway...

Call for papers: Global and European Administrative Law

One of the leading research institutes within the GAL project, the Institute for Research on Public Administration (Istituto di ricerche sulla pubblica amministrazione - IRPA - led by Prof Sabino Cassese in Rome), has begun a new research project on global and European administrative law, which is scheduled for completion in September 2010. They have published a call for papers on the following subject: "The relationship between global administrative law and European administrative law":

Little attention has been paid to the relationships between European administrative legal order and global regulatory regimes. Yet, such relationships can raise a number of problems. To name but a few: can global law be used in evaluating the legitimacy of European acts, and within which limits? How does European law filter the relations among the EU member States and global regulation? And what principles govern the co-existence among the various components of the legal discipline?

The call for papers details four seoparate research themes that the project will address. Accepted texts will be published firstly on the IRPA website, with the possibility of a print publication - particularly for articles written in English - at a later date. Deadline for submission of abstracts is February 29, 2009.

Max Planck Institute project on International Institutions published

The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law has just published the results of a major research project on The Exercise of Public Authority by International Institutions in the excellent, free online resource, the German Law Journal (full text of all articles available here). A table of contents is available here. Here's a brief overview:

Two articles set out the general approach adopted within the Project, which aims at a combination of global administrative law, constitutionalist discourse and international institutional law. The fifteen thematic studies cover a broad range of international governance mechanisms, including hard and soft forms of regulation, some familiar and others less so Seven cross-cutting analyses take stock of the developments and aim at advancing international legal doctrine. These papers will also be published as a book, together with additional papers and comments by international scholars.

I'll be reading these articles with great interest, and highly recommend that anyone interested in the field of global administrative law do the same. I will post some reflections here - particularly from a GAL perspective - later this week. However, it is readily evident from the outset that the fact that this Project has been brought to such a successful conclusion - both in the German Law Journal special issue, and the forthcoming book - is a major achievement, both for the scholars involved at the MPI and elsewhere, and in terms of the ongoing - and rapid - development of global administrative law more generally. Congratulations to all involved!

Papers from the Viterbo IV GAL Seminar now available online

Just a quick post to note that almost all of the papers from the Viterbo IV GAL Seminar are now available online, on the websites of both the IILJ and IRPA. The seminar focused on the topic of "Global Administrative Law: from fragmentation to unity?", and had 14 different papers, of which the following 12 are now available:

Supra-national Governance And The WTO: A Model For The Anti-Corruption Movement?
Padideh Ala’i

Global Judicial Review: A Remedy Against Fragmentation?
Mariangela Benedetti

Between Fragmentation and Unity, GAL Should Focus On Efficiency- The Arguments For An Effective Environmental Protection
Rafaël Chetrit

A Common GAL: The Legitimating Role Of The Global Rule Of Law
Georgios Dimitropoulos

Transparency As A Global Goal: Towards An Unity Of Principles In Global Administrative Law
Carlos Iván Fuentes

‘Info-courts’ and the Accountability of International Organizations: Evidence from the World Bank Inspection Panel
Thomas N. Hale

Global Administrative Law in Domestic Courts. Why and How to hold Global Administrative Bodies accountable
Andrej Lang

The "Emergence" Of Global Administrative Law?
Euan MacDonald

The WTO Dispute Settlement System: Administration, Court or Tertium Genus?
Barbara Marchetti

Investment Treaties: Instruments Of Bilateralism Or Elements Of An Evolving Multilateral System?
Stephan Schill

The Arctic gold rush is juridical - The Procedure Of The Extension Of The Russian Federation’s Continental Shelf Analysed Through Global Administrative Law
Rui Tavares Lanceiro

The Judicial System of Mercosur: Is there Administrative Justice?
Mario Viola de Azevedo Cunha

The next of the annual Viterbo seminars will take place on the 12-13th of June, 2009, and will focus on issues relating to the review of global administrative action (by global courts, compliance committees, inspection panels, etc.).

Just published - GAL: Cases, Materials, Issues (2nd edition)

Just a quick post to announce the publication of the second - considerably expanded - edition of the Global Administrative Law Casebook has just been published. The Casebook, developed by the Istituto di Ricerche sulla Pubblica Amministrazione (IRPA) in Rome in conjunction with the IILJ at NYU, seeks to analyze global administrative law through the elaboration and examination of a number of different cases and case studies. The structure of its contents mirrors the characteristics of this new field, with sections on the emergence of global standards; on the new, complex forms of governance; on global principles for national administrative procedures; on due process; on judicial globalization; on the enforcement of global decisions; on overlapping and conflicting jurisdiction; and on the important field of global security.

Each of the forty-one sections of the book has been considerably extended from the previous edition, and now they all follow the same basic schema: each has a section on the relevant background; a list of materials and sources (with hyperlinks wherever possible); an analysis of the example in question; and a discussion of the various issues to which it gives rise, enabling each author to flag some basic theoretical problems, and to highlight the relations between the different topics examined in the book. Each section concludes with list of recommended further reading, relating specifically to the topic with which it dealt. Lastly, a general bibliography provides an overview of the most relevant works on global legal issues, and particularly global administrative law, divided into twelve different categories.

The Casebook is edited by Sabino Cassese, Bruno Carotti, Lorenzo Casini, Marco Macchia, Mario Savino and myself. Our hope is that, in this and in future iterations, it can make a genuine contribution to the crystallisation of global administrative law as a discrete and important new field of legal theory and practice.

Global administrative law: What's the point?

The major focus of global administrative law is, of course, about finding ways to regulate the activities of global regulatory bodies, in order that the exercise of public power beyond the nation-state remains responsive - and accountable - to the interests upon which it impacts. Is there any real point to this, however, when, as David Rothkopf has suggested recently, the real power and influence in global affairs is exercised by a small, networked group of super-rich individuals that he calls the "superclass", a group characterised by their individual capacity to profoundly influence the lives of millions? Here is Rothkopf's take on what is at stake:

In a world with only two kinds of international institutions -- weak and dysfunctional -- the members of this superclass are filling a power vacuum when it comes to influencing decisions about transnational issues such as financial-market regulation or climate change. (Many countries voted for the Kyoto accords on global warming, but it took just Exxon and a handful of other oil companies to successfully lobby the White House to opt out and undercut the entire initiative.) In so doing, they raise real questions about the future of global governance. Will the global era be more democratic or less so? Will inequality continue to grow, as it has for the past three decades of this group's rise, or recede? Will the few dominate because the government mechanisms that traditionally represent the views of the many are so underdeveloped on a global scale?

I heard an interesting discussion of this book (involving, amongst others, the author himself) on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Alllowed programme last week (available here, for the time being at least - the relevant section starts around 15 minutes in). Rothkopf notes that his book is intended as "a look at how the power structure of the global era is different from the power structure of eras in the past", citing the rapid rise in private actors among the most influential actors in global governance, who together form a relatively homogeneous, networked superclass, "knitted together" by such events as the World Economic Forum in Davos, at and through which they set the global agenda ("Davos is the factory where global conventional wisdom is manufactured", according to Rothkopf).

Is global administrative law useless in such a context? Quite the contrary: the power and influence of the 6000 or so members of this "superclass" can rarely be exercised directly; rather, it must be mediated through the public institutions that are still formally responsible for making decisions and adopting legislation. In theory, it is precisely through the establishment and application of robust administrative law mechanisms, ensuring transparency, participation and accountability, that it can be made much more difficult for public power to be influenced in an undue manner by private interests (without, of course, any naivety as to its capacity to achieve this goal in any ideal manner).

Far from rendering it useless, then, the emergence of the "superclass" provides us with one of the most pressing reasons for pushing on with the global administrative law project to the greatest extent possible (whilst remaining, of course, alert to the danger that the mechanisms and rules thus proposed can themselves function as instruments of capture for dominant interests). As Rothkopf himself notes, at the end of the radio piece referred to above, "we need the public sector empowered on the global stage to represent the interests of the many, so that the interests of the few don’t drive the car…".

This, of course, is precisely the point.

A GAL analysis of the Security Council Panels of Experts

Just a quick post to flag a new GAL-related publication in the Emerging Scholars Working Papers Series, run by the Institute of International Law and Justice at NYU. Luciana Ricart's paper, entitled "Due Process of Law in the Fact-Finding work of the Security Council’s Panels of Experts: An Analysis in terms of Global Administrative Law", is a detailed analysis of an as yet relatively under-studied area of the global administrative activity carried out under the auspices of the UN Security Council.

Through two case-studies, namely the Panels established with respect to violations of the sanctions regimes in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ricart argues that not only are these panels fulfilling an important public function in their fact-finding role, but that they are also, in evaluating the conformity of the facts that they uncover with certain normative standards (e.g. those established by the sanctions regimes), they are also performing a quasi-judicial function that can have profound and far-reaching implications for the individuals and companies involved. On this basis, she finds that far more robust administrative law-type rules and mechanisms must accompany the work of these panels of experts, in order to ensure that the rights of those accused of wrongdoing are adequately protected. Ricart concludes by suggesting what some of these mechanisms might look like, drawing on both international human rights law and the best practices found in domestic constitutional frameworks.

Well worth a look.

New policy report - "The UN Security Council and the Rule of Law "

Just a quick post to flag the release of a new policy report, with recommendations for reform, entitled "The UN Security Council and the Rule of Law", the result of a 4 year initiative of the Austrian Government, supported by the Institute of International Law and Justice at NYU. The report was written by Simon Chesterman, professor of law at both NYU and the National University of Singapore.

Here's a brief blurb:

[T]he report recognizes that the Security Council has grown beyond its initial function as a political forum and frequently serves important legal functions. At the same time, there is a widely perceived need for the Council to ground these new functions in a normative framework that is both legitimate and effective. This report maps out how it might go about doing so, building on four years of meetings with experts and practitioners.

The report is available here (including a preface by the Austrian Minister for European and International Affairs). Chesterman has another, more general reflection on the notion of the rule of law and its application to the international sphere available here. Below, for those interested, I have reproduced the executive summary of the report in full:

Executive Summary

(i) The UN Security Council is the most powerful multilateral political institution. It has grown well beyond its initial function as a political forum and serves important legal functions. Traditionally, this included determining that a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression had occurred and prescribing specific, legally binding obligations on Member States under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Today it embraces establishing complex regimes to enforce its decisions and passing resolutions of general rather than specific application. These expanded powers can facilitate swift and decisive action, but have raised questions about the legal context within which the Council operates and the extent to which the Council itself adheres to the rule of law.

(ii) The "rule of law" is widely embraced at the national and international levels without much precision as to what the term means. At the national level, it requires a government of laws, the supremacy of the law, and equality before the law. Strengthening a rules-based international system by applying these principles at the international level would increase predictability of behaviour, prevent arbitrariness, and ensure basic fairness. For the Council, greater use of existing law and greater emphasis on its own grounding in the law will ensure greater respect for its decisions.

(iii) In addition to post-conflict peacebuilding, the rule of law is now also seen as a tool for preventing or resolving conflicts. The preparedness of Member States to take collective action, through the Council, was endorsed, in limited circumstances, at the 2005 World Summit by the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect. It should be supported by firm opposition to impunity and greater efforts to establish or re-establish the rule of law in fragile States. The rule of law must also apply to those who intervene.

(iv) The Council is a creature of law but there is no formal process for reviewing its decisions; the ultimate sanctions on its authority are political. These include challenges to the Council's authority through the General Assembly, or individual or collective refusal to comply with its decisions. It is in no one's interest to push these political limits. For its part, the Council should limit itself to using its extraordinary powers for extraordinary purposes. When it is necessary to pass resolutions of a legislative character, respect for them will be enhanced by a process that ensures transparency, participation, and accountability. When the Council contemplates judicial functions, it should draw on existing institutions of international law.

(v) Sanctions targeted at individuals have presented a challenge to the authority of the Council: legal proceedings have been commenced in various jurisdictions and there is evidence that sanctions are not always applied rigorously. The Council should be proactive in further improving "fair and clear procedures" to protect the rights of individuals affected by its decisions, complying with minimum standards and providing on its own for periodic review.

(vi) The Security Council is most legitimate and most effective when it submits itself to the rule of law. Though the Council does not operate free of legal limits, the most important limit on the Council is self-restraint. Member States' preparedness to recognize the authority of the Council depends in significant part on how responsible and accountable it is -- and is seen to be -- in the use of its extraordinary powers. All Member States and the Security Council itself thus have an interest in promoting the rule of law and strengthening a rules-based international system.

Max Planck Institute project on international bureaucracies

Scholars at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, in Heidelberg, Germany, are coming to the end of an extensive and ambitious two-year research project into the law of international bureaucracies. The project's website - for all those who speak better German than I do - is available here; although it is worth noting that the results of the project, to be presented at a seminar at the Institute in April of this year, will be in English.

The main bulk of the project consists in around twenty detailed case-studies of international administrations and the law regulating them. These include international organisations that produce binding norms or decisions (such as ILO, UNHCR, Security Council); those that produce non-binding norms (certain aspects of the World Bank, OECD, OSCE and FAO); treaty regimes (CITES, Kyoto); networked regimes (dealing with issues of security, migration and energy); and hybrid organisations (ICANN). A full(er) list of the case studies can be found on this workshop programme (in English) from earlier in the project.

Plans are, it seems, to first publish some of the case studies in the German Law Journal (an excellent, free, monthly online academic publication), and then to follow thus up with a more comprehensive book on the subject later in the year. Of course, we'll keep you informed as these come out.

New Global Administrative Law journal symposium published

A number of the papers from the Global Administrative Law Workshop held in Buenos Aires in March 2007, co-sponsored by NYU and the Universidad de San Andrés, have been published in the October -December 2007 issue of Res Publica Argentina, in a mini-symposium on "The Argentine Financial Crisis and Bilateral Investment Treaties".

The papers, written in English or Spanish, include a Spanish translation of the Kingsbury, Krisch and Stewart framing paper, entitled "The Emergence of Global Administrative Law", that launched the project; and various other papers looking at the role of Argentine courts and bilateral investment treaties in the broader context of the financial crisis at the turn of the century.

Full text versions of all of the articles have been made available on the Global Administrative Law pages of the IILJ website.

Erasmus Law Review: Call for Papers

The Erasmus Law Review has just issued a call for papers that is of real relevance for anybody seeking to write and publish on global administrative law. It raises a number of important issues, including many as yet left largely unaddressed within GAL literature generally:

Since its rise at the beginning of the 20^th century, comparative legal research has gained an influential place in legal research concerning national legal systems. Comparative legal methodology is used to acquire insight into foreign legal systems, to find solutions for problems of a specific legal system, or to promote the unification of law between national legal systems. Its methods consist in a comparison of different legal systems or legal traditions (external comparison) or of fields of law within national legal systems (internal comparison). With the proliferation of regulatory regimes at the international level (e.g. in the context of the United Nations or WTO), comparative lawyers have extended their focus to the field of international law. Consensus, however, has not been reached on the most suitable way of applying comparative law methods to the global context. Can the concepts and methods developed to conduct comparative legal research of national legal systems be transposed to study the international legal system?

As the call for papers goes on to make clear, the journal is in the main interested in those writing from a comparative perspective on this issue. At least two as yet under-studied GAL issues arise clearly: firstly, the differences between different national perspectives on the meaning, scope and content of domestic administrative law, and how these might translate into the global setting (and it is worth bearing in mind here that a criticism often levelled at the GAL project, by European scholars in particular, is that it remains locked within a US "interest representation" model of administrative law); and secondly, the equally vexed question of the complex relationship between the global administrative law project on one hand, and the field of public international law on the other. The development of a body of work addressing either or both of these comparative perspectives could prove to be a very significant advance in terms of the project more generally.

Viterbo III papers and report now available

The papers from the Viterbo III GAL seminar, focusing on the participation of private actors in global administrative law, are now available online. They deal with a wide range of different issues and global regulatory bodies, including the Clean Development Mechanism, the Basel II regulations, the ICAO, voluntary environmental standard setting and the role of TRIPS in Chinese administrative law.

A full account of the discussions at the workshop can be found here.