April 22nd and 23rd, 2005
Global governance increasingly takes the form of regulatory administration by intergovernmental agencies, by national agencies whose policies are coordinated in international institutions or informal networks, and by hybrid public-private bodies. Serious unmet problems of participation, accountability, and fairness already limit the legitimacy and effectiveness of these vast fields of regulatory governance. In national democracies, administrative law has developed to ensure that agencies making regulations and specific decisions consult with those affected, and can be challenged and reviewed. There is so far no general administrative law for transnational governance. Accountability mechanisms are emerging in specialist areas, but these are often isolated from each other.
This conference brought together leading specialists on different regulatory problems - from the UN Security Council to the World Bank, from food safety to labor standards to timber certification - to consider the big picture of how the administration of global governance does work and should work. The aim was to help map and shape the emerging new field of global administrative law. It includes mechanisms for participation and review in transnational agencies, industry bodies, and private-public partnerships, and the roles of national courts in reviewing transnational rules and decisions.
Many of the papers presented at the conference may be found on the homepage of the Global Administrative Law project. See www.iilj.org/global_adlaw. A number of the papers are being published in a forthcoming global administrative law symposium issue of the NYU Journal of International Law and Policy.
