© 2016 PILAGG

May 20th – Private Regulation and the Rule of Law, by Joel Bakan

FRIDAY 20th May 2016: Prof. Joel Bakan (University of British Columbia)

NOTE FOR EXTERNAL GUESTS (not from Sciences Po) : Due to security measures, access to the PILAGG seminar is limited to 10 external guests. If you intend to attend the seminar, please send an email to damien.charlotin@sciencespo.fr indicating your full name. Security officers will be provided with the list of participants, do not forget to bring a VALID ID. Thank you for your understanding. 

The Invisible Hand of Law: Private Regulation and the Rule of Law

The early 1980s— when “politics and ideology . . . turned arse-over-tit,” as E.P. Thompson once described it— was, in the less colorful language of David Harvey, a “revolutionary turning point in the world’s social and economic history.” Law was not immune to the sweeping changes taking place. Until the 1980s, and over the previous half century, law had served (albeit unevenly and incompletely) as the main institutional vehicle for policing corporations in aid of public interests, thereby protecting people, communities, and the environment from corporate excess and malfeasance. Over the course of the 1980s and thereafter, however, law’s protective role began to diminish, and privately promulgated voluntary regimes, which we will call “private regulation”, emerged in its place.
Many private regulation advocates and commentators presume that globalization eviscerates state legal power, and prescribe, on that basis, that private regimes should take law’s place. This seminar shall challenges that presumption and prescription.
  • Discussant: Catalina Avasilencei (Paris I Sorbonne)
  • Paper available at: http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/ILJ/upload/Bakan-final.pdf

When? On Friday 20th May, 2.30 – 5.30 pm

Where? At Sciences Po Law School, 13 rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris, Salle de réunion (4th floor).