The term ‘global law’ is an increasingly familiar one in our legal vocabulary. It refers, narrowly, to forms of positive law that claim a globally extensive reach as well as, more broadly, to an entire new paradigm of legal thought which, rather than the bounded context of the state, treats the postnational as an encompassing frame of reference and point of departure for legal understanding and prescription. The lecture explores the significance of characterizing this new domain of global law, embracing notions such as global administrative law, global constitutionalism, global Rule of Law, and the new ius gentium, as possessing an ‘intimated’ quality. If something is ‘intimated’ it remains as yet unfulfilled, but already exists in emergent form. In addition, its precise meaning and purpose tends to be oblique, yet its general development is deemed inexorable. This set of ‘intimated’ characteristics, I will argue, captures something importantly distinctive and novel about global law. In turn, this novelty indicates an altered relationship between the legal academic and his object of study, and so a changing role for a new generation of legal academics.
About the Speaker: Neil Walker is Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh. His main area of expertise is constitutional theory. He has published extensively on the constitutional dimension of legal order at sub-state, state, supranational and international levels, and also on questions of the relationship between security, legality and civility. Previously he was Professor of Legal and Constitutional Theory at the University of Aberdeen (1996-2000), and, more recently, was Professor of European Law at the European University Institute in Florence (2000-8). He has also been visiting professor at a number of universities including NYU, Columbia, Cornell and Toronto.
Location: Murray Lecture Theatre 1067
Date and time: Thursday 7 February, 6pm-8pm
For details: contact Dr Oren Ben-Dor ([email protected] or 023 8059 3282)