The Constitution of Private Governance: Product Standards in the Regulation of Integrating Markets(International Studies in the Theory of Private Law)

In quantity and importance, private standards are rapidly taking over the role of public norms in the international and national regulation of product safety. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the rise, role and status of these private product safety standards in the legal regulation of integrating markets. In international and regional trade law as in European and American constitutional and administrative law, tort law and antitrust law, the book analyses the ways in which legal systems can and do recognise private norms as ‘law.’ This sociological question of law’s recognition of private governance is indissolubly connected with a normative question of democratic theory: can law recognize legal validity and democratic legitimacy outside the constitution, without constitutional political institutions and beyond the nation state? Or: can law ‘constitute’ private transnational governance? The book offers the first systematic treatment of European, American and international ‘standards law’ in the English language, and makes a significant contribution to the study of the processes of globalization and privatization in social and legal theory. For the thesis on which this book was based Harm Schepel was awarded the first EUI Alumni Prize for the "best interdisciplinary and/or comparative thesis on European issues" written at the EUI in recent years.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 The Rise of Private Governance: Functional Differentiation and Economic Globalisation 2 The European Community: Market Integration and Private Transnationalism 3 The United States: Deregulation and Legalisation 4 Standards in the European Union 5 Standards and Codes in the United States 6 International Harmonisation of Standards 7 Private Regulation in European Public Law 8 Private Regulation in American Public Law 9 Politics and the Economy: Linking Institutions in Competition Law 10 Custom, Science and Law: Linking Institutions in Tort Conclusion The Constitution of Private Governance

About the Author :
Harm Schepel is a Senior Lecturer at Kent Law School and at the Brussels School for International Studies, University of Kent.

Review :
…this elegantly written book paints the big picture..and the narrative is unusually helpful in guiding the reader through the complexity, which should ensure the book's value and interest…