Law 796: Law Global Lawmaking

In the last two decades an enormous volume and variety of global lawmaking has been produced by transnational courts, quasi-legislatures and regulatory bodies. The law created by these institutions opens up broad new terrains of international law and affects virtually every area of domestic law. This enterprise of global law production also brings together lawyers, legal practitioners, and social scientists in a mutual effort to understand what is happening and how it affects law, politics and society. This short course offers an intensive introduction to global lawmaking from an inter-disciplinary perspective. It will consider explanations of global lawmaking and local practices in five diverse areas of lawmaking: trade law (especially UNCITRAL and the WTO); human rights (especially violence against women in war), environmental regulation (especially climate change and forest regulation), weapons accords (especially landmine regulation), and health (especially HIV/AIDS treatment regimes).

 

The course will be organized as a seminar. All students are expected to read assigned materials for each class; each student is expected to introduce a particular reading and do a brief class presentation on an international lawmaking organization. The grade will be based 75 percent on a paper due one week after the final class and 25 percent on class preparation and participation.

 

Sequence and Prerequisites: None.