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In comparison to GATT law, WTO law is characterized by a notably expanded coverage. Since its inception in 1995, its material density and reach has been further extended. It was only a question of time before the demand would arise for this branch of law to fulfil objectives lying outside the traditional borders of International Economic Law (IEL). In particular, it was recognized that WTO law touches in many ways upon human rights issues. Vigorous claims were made to transform the WTO order into a human rights organization. Some authors were of the opinion that human rights law (HRL) could be integrated into WTO law via the interpretative rules of the VCLT. This contribution tries to evidence that such attempts are inherently flawed.

"A large body of European Union (EU) law - EU administrative law - is not made by the EU's democratically elected bodies, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (EP). Instead, most administrative laws are made by the unelected European Commission. That, of itself, does not mean that the EU is insufficiently democratic: most democracies delegate the power to make administrative laws to unelected regulators. In those democracies, however, elected legislatures can at least change administrative laws after they are promulgated. This article contends that the EU is different: the Council and EP are effectively unable to change administrative laws. This article identifies 'design flaws' in the EU's lawmaking processes that are responsible for this democratic shortcoming. It then surveys relevant provisions of the new Lisbon Treaty in order to determine whether Lisbon will remedy that shortcoming: whether it will empower the Council and EP - or citizens directly - to change administrative laws."

"How does the globalization of law, the emergence of multiple and shifting venues of legal accountability, enhance or evade the fulfillment of international human rights? The utility of law for the fulfillment of human rights can be summarized as a combination of normative principles, universal repertoire of definitions and boundaries, links to state enforcement, predictable processes for conflict resolution, and a doctrine of equal standing (Kinley 2009 27. KINLEY , David . 2009 . Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy , Cambridge , NY : Cambridge University Press . View all references : 215). The intersection between the globalization of law and the globalization of rights is a question of global governance: In what ways and to what extent can and should law across borders regulate and enforce the protection of individuals from abuse of both global and local authority? What does existing literature tell us about where we stand in our understanding of the extent and meaning of these intersecting forms of globalization? There is a rough spectrum from pessimistic structural theories through more optimistic cosmopolitan reformist theories of norm change, with a middle position of a sociological and indeterminate dialectical struggle over the terms and impact of global governance. While we see clear evidence in the international human rights regime of the globalization of norms, definitions, and processes, it is unclear how much the globalization of law has enhanced enforcement or even standing for the fulfillment of core rights of the person."

"International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn' in the field of International Relations. At the heart of this transformation are the juridification of international politics and subsequently the judicialisation of international law. This contribution argues that scholars of critical International Political Economy have not yet paid enough attention to this process. What is needed is a theory of international law that is able to grasp the societal implications of this transformation. In a first step some accounts drawing on Antonio Gramsci and Evgeny Pashukanis are presented, with a view to making their theory fruitful for analysing international law. Against the background of an empirical study that compares the global regulation of trade in goods with the trade in services, delivered notably through natural persons, some major shortcomings of these accounts are outlined. The last part of the contribution presents some ideas on how to further develop a critical theory of international (trade) law that introduces a communicative dimension into the legal turn with a view to distinguishing between different extra-economic dynamics."

International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn' in the field of International Relations. At the heart of this transformation are the juridification of international politics and subsequently the judicialisation of international law. This contribution argues that scholars of critical International Political Economy have not yet paid enough attention to this process. What is needed is a theory of international law that is able to grasp the societal implications of this transformation. In a first step some accounts drawing on Antonio Gramsci and Evgeny Pashukanis are presented, with a view to making their theory fruitful for analysing international law. Against the background of an empirical study that compares the global regulation of trade in goods with the trade in services, delivered notably through natural persons, some major shortcomings of these accounts are outlined. The last part of the contribution presents some ideas on how to further develop a critical theory of international (trade) law that introduces a communicative dimension into the legal turn with a view to distinguishing between different extra-economic dynamics

This article challenges the optimism common to liberal IR and IL scholarship on the 'rule of law' in global governance. It argues that the concept of the 'rule of law' is often employed with sparse inquiry into the politics of its practical meaning. Specifically, the article focuses on liberal research that advocates the emergence of a 'global' judiciary, and the claim that judicial governance will marginalize state power and authority. Rather than employ a zero-sum conception of power, this article regards a prospective global legal system less as a constraint on state power and more as a rationale for rule 'through' law by vested actors. To make the argument, Michel Foucault's concept of 'governmentality' is combined with Barnett and Duvall's notion of 'productive power' to denote how legal techniques of power are integral to the construction of social 'truth' and consequently the governance of conduct. This is further associated with Koskenniemi's critical scholarship on the power of law's perceived objectivity and universality. In this vein, the article questions how liberal scholars use the American judicial model (the Marbury ideal) to claim that an institutionalization of 'global' judicial authority can deliver the rule of 'no one' in global governance. A governmentality perspective is then applied which suggests that the lack of supreme constitutional rules at the global level makes judicial governance less a check than a means to propagate normative standards conducive to dominant state power.

This article examines the compelling enigma of how the introduction of a new international law, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), helped stimulate labor cooperation and collaboration in the 1990s. It offers a theory of legal transnationalism-defined as processes by which international laws and legal mechanisms facilitate social movement building at the transnational level-that explains how nascent international legal institutions and mechanisms can help develop collective interests, build social movements, and, ultimately, stimulate cross-border collaboration and cooperation. It identifies three primary dimensions of legal transnationalism that explain how international laws stimulate and constrain movement building through: (1) formation of collective identity and interests (constitutive effects), (2) facilitation of collective action (mobilization effects), and (3) adjudication and enforcement (redress effects).

Why does the willingness of interest groups to join forces with their peers abroad vary across issues? The present article points to cross-issue variation in the "constrain-thy-neighbor" effects of transnational law. Interest groups consider not only whether they are worse off if they themselves are subjected to a transnational law. They also consider how it affects them if the same law applies abroad. Depending on the issue, they derive advantages or disadvantages from seeing their neighbors constrained, and this affects their willingness to fight transnational legislation on that issue. To illustrate the argument, the article compares cohesion within the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe (UNICE), the European peak employer federation, on two aspects of EU company law. UNICE members were divided over EU takeover directives while uniting against EU worker participation directives. Statements released by German and British UNICE members show that the divergent constrain-thy-neighbor effect associated with these issues contributed to variation in cohesion.

Burma watchers should be urged to study the election laws exceedingly carefully rather than automatically reacting with condemnation. The popular media have already asserted that the law is a "mockery of democracy", however, only portions of the law have

"Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth's three studies-Dealing in Virtue (1996), The Internationalization of Palace Wars (2002), Asian Legal Revivals (2010)-trace the globalization of law through "palace wars" among elites for positions in the "fields of state power." They conclude that globalization occurs through links among elites engaged in their domestic palace wars, which independently establish the symbolic power of law in each state. The article argues that while Dezalay and Garth provide an invaluable new starting point for further research, they do not adequately consider an emerging field of research documenting alternative pathways of legal development pursued by local activists inside and outside the new states of the Global South."

Labor law was traditionally a domestic project, defined on the basis of a geographic territory or a synthetic community; its norms were determined by the state and applied to employers and workers who resided within the state. Commonly, labor law is admin

What should the relationship between citizens and the law in a liberal democracy look like? The idea that citizens should be associated with the laws that govern them is a cornerstone of democratic theory. Yet the specific nature of this relationship has

This study examines the role of the media in sustaining regime stability in an authoritarian context. The article engages the recent work on authoritarian resilience in comparative politics but goes beyond the standard focus on elections to other important institutions, such as the media and courts, that are used by authoritarian leaders to bolster legitimacy. The authors find that the Chinese media contribute to regime legitimacy and effective rule by propagandizing citizens' experiences in the legal system. However, unlike the "mouthpieces" of earlier communist regimes, the marketized Chinese media provide more convincing and sophisticated messages that continue to accord with state censorship demands while satisfying readers' interest in real-life stories and problems. The "positive propaganda" and the relative uniformity of information sources because of state censorship lead aggrieved citizens to the law as a realm for dispute resolution and rights protection. Statistical analysis of a randomly sampled survey conducted in four Chinese cities in 2005 demonstrates that exposure to media reporting about labor-law-related issues successfully promotes the image of a proworker bias in the law among citizens, thus encouraging them to participate in the legal system. The state is able to achieve its political goal because of the lack of conflicting sources of information and the lack of previous experience with the reformed legal system among citizens.

For Kant and many modern cosmopolitans, establishing the rule of law provides the chief mechanism for achieving a just global order. Yet, as Hart and Rawls have argued, the rule of law, as it is commonly understood, is quite consistent with "great iniquit

This article enquires into the implications the modern literature on economic development emanating from international institutions has for law reform and the role of the state in the economy. The main question asked is whether regulation has a uniform ro

Last week brought news that the Egyptian government is circulating a new draft NGO law, one which would severely restrict available space for civil society and criminalize the activities of unregistered civic organizations. A coalition of 41 NGOs, headlin

A number of scholars have recently claimed that 'stateness' is a prerequisite for democracy. However, a large-N empirical appraisal of this new research agenda is still pending. In this article, we demonstrate that stateness - conceptualized using the twin attributes of the monopoly on the use of force within a sovereign territory and a basic agreement about citizenship - is to a large extent a necessary condition for the four democratic attributes of electoral rights, political liberties, the rule of law, and social rights. However, the analyses also show that stateness is especially critical for the latter two attributes whereas the former two are sometimes encountered in its absence. These results are robust and they fit well into the dominant writings on democratization, which emphasize that in the present 'liberal hegemony' democratic elections are often grafted onto weak states - but that the rule of law and social rights are much more intimately wedded to structural constraints such as stateness.

"This article applies a sociolegal approach to the study of transnational legal processes and their effects within countries. First, we clarify the concepts of transnational law, transnational legal process, and transnational legal order. Second, we provide a typology of five dimensions of state change that we can assess empirically. Third, we explain the factors that determine the variable effects of transnational legal processes and organize these factors into three clusters. Fourth, we introduce four empirical studies of transnational legal processes' differential effects in five regulatory areas in Asia, Africa, and South America that illustrate these points. Together, they provide a guide of how to study the interaction of transnational and national legal processes, and the extent and limits of transnational legal processes' effects."

The real challenge to the administration of justice in China is, rather, the undue intrusion of politics and, even more broadly, of 'guanxi', the network of interpersonal relations of mutual protection, benefit and dependency that is one of the enduring h

This article examines the neo-conservative critique of global liberal governance. It provides a theoretically oriented assessment of the neo-conservative case against international law and human rights regimes, and draws out the main political and ethical