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.

An examination of the legal framework of the EU internal market as established in the case law of the European Court of Justice, discussing in particular EC competition law, the free movement of goods, services, persons and capital and the evolution of the interpretation of the provisions. The 'State' has been retreating from direct intervention in economic life as more goods and services, the provision of which was once thought to be a 'public' responsibility, are delivered through market mechanisms. Given the need for consistent application of EC law in the internal market, a common core conception of public authority, shielded from the discipline of EC competition law, is needed. The resulting realignment of public and private functions and responsibilities is not a linear and coherent process, especially in light of the changing nature of the European legal integration project and the progressive incorporation of non-economic values in the Treaties.

An examination of the legal framework of the EU internal market as established in the case law of the European Court of Justice, discussing in particular EC competition law, the free movement of goods, services, persons and capital and the evolution of the interpretation of the provisions. The 'State' has been retreating from direct intervention in economic life as more goods and services, the provision of which was once thought to be a 'public' responsibility, are delivered through market mechanisms. Given the need for consistent application of EC law in the internal market, a common core conception of public authority, shielded from the discipline of EC competition law, is needed. The resulting realignment of public and private functions and responsibilities is not a linear and coherent process, especially in light of the changing nature of the European legal integration project and the progressive incorporation of non-economic values in the Treaties.