As in all periods of swift economic development and political upheaval, our era of globalization has brought corruption and conflicts of interest into the spotlight. This comprehensive study highlights the difficulties of devising global legislative and judicial responses to these issues.The papers gathered in this volume demonstrate how global regulations tend to meet strong cultural resistance, in particular when dealing with the more subtle patterns of conflicts of interest. It is a notion that is far from successfully regulated in every country or addressed in compatible ways. In fact, the comparisons offered demonstrate that even international organizations such as the European Union have failed to fully consolidate their systems for mitigating their own risks of corruption and conflicts of interest. Providing a comprehensive study of the phenomenon of corruption and conflicts of interest from a comparative perspective, this book will prove vital for academics, NGOs and practitioners. Contributors: S.A. Aaronson, M.R. Abouharb, J.-B. Auby, M. Benedetti, E. Breen, E. Chiti, E. D'Alterio, H. Delzangles, L. Folliot-Lalliot, D. Gordon, G. Houillon, P. Lascoumes, Y. Marique, B.G. Mattarella, R.E. Messick, C. Moser, T. Paris, T. Perroud, C. Rose, S. Rose-Ackerman, P. Szarek Mason, C. Tansug, S. White

Globalisation, Law and the State begins - as is customary in globalisation literature - with an acknowledgement of the definitional difficulties associated with globalisation. Rather than labour the point, the book identifies some economic, political and cultural dimensions to the phenomenon and uses these to analyse existing and emerging challenges to State-centric and territorial models of law and governance. It surveys three areas that are typically associated with globalisation - financial markets, the internet, and public contracts - as well as trade more generally, the environment, human rights, and national governance. On this basis it considers how global legal norms are formed, how they enmesh with the norms of other legal orders, and how they create pressure for legal harmonisation. This, in turn, leads to an analysis of the corresponding challenges that globalisation presents to traditional notions of sovereignty and the models of public law that have grown from them. While some of the themes addressed here will be familiar to students of the European process (there are prominent references to the European experience throughout the book), Globalisation, Law and the State provides a clear insight into how the sovereign space of States and their legal orders are diminishing and being replaced by an altogether more fluid system of intersecting orders and norms. This is followed by an analysis of the theory and practice of the globalisation of law, and a suggestion that the workings of law in the global era can best be conceived of in terms of networks that link together a range of actors that exist above, below and within the State, as well as on either side of the public-private divide. This book is an immensely valuable, innovative and concise study of globalisation and its effect on law and the state.

Globalisation, Law and the State begins - as is customary in globalisation literature - with an acknowledgement of the definitional difficulties associated with globalisation. Rather than labour the point, the book identifies some economic, political and cultural dimensions to the phenomenon and uses these to analyse existing and emerging challenges to State-centric and territorial models of law and governance. It surveys three areas that are typically associated with globalisation - financial markets, the internet, and public contracts - as well as trade more generally, the environment, human rights, and national governance. On this basis it considers how global legal norms are formed, how they enmesh with the norms of other legal orders, and how they create pressure for legal harmonisation. This, in turn, leads to an analysis of the corresponding challenges that globalisation presents to traditional notions of sovereignty and the models of public law that have grown from them. While some of the themes addressed here will be familiar to students of the European process (there are prominent references to the European experience throughout the book), Globalisation, Law and the State provides a clear insight into how the sovereign space of States and their legal orders are diminishing and being replaced by an altogether more fluid system of intersecting orders and norms. This is followed by an analysis of the theory and practice of the globalisation of law, and a suggestion that the workings of law in the global era can best be conceived of in terms of networks that link together a range of actors that exist above, below and within the State, as well as on either side of the public-private divide. This book is an immensely valuable, innovative and concise study of globalisation and its effect on law and the state.

The contributions brought together in this book derive from joint seminars, held by scholars between colleagues from the University of Oxford and the University of Paris II. Their starting point is the original divergence between the two jurisdictions, with the initial rejection of the public-private divide in English Law, but on the other hand its total acceptance as natural in French Law. Then, they go on to demonstrate that the two systems have converged, the British one towards a certain degree of acceptance of the division, the French one towards a growing questioning of it. However this is not the only part of the story, since both visions are now commonly coloured and affected by European Law and by globalisation, which introduces new tensions into our legal understanding of what is "public" and what is "private".

Global Administrative Law has recently emerged as one of the most important contemporary fields in public law scholarship. Concerned with developing fuller understandings of patterns in global governance, it represents one of the most insightful ways of viewing the multifarious forms of public power that now exist beyond the State. The present collection brings together some of the leading scholars working in the field of global administrative law to address past and future challenges related to global governance. Each of the contributions picks up on the more general theme of the values that do or should inform global administrative law, and the book in this way provides a novel and thought-provoking commentary on this most engaging area of debate. Values in Global Administrative Law will be of interest to public lawyers, social and political scientists and scholars of international relations. It will also be an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses that touch partly or exclusively on the challenges of global governance.

In a number of important decisions such as Stovin v. Wise, X v. Bedforshire, Barrett v. Enfield London Borough Council and others, English courts have been forced to grapple with the important issue of tortious liability of statutory bodies. Following the Hill decision, they opted for a wide non-liability rule on a variety of policy and economic efficiency grounds. Yet many of their arguments have been considered and rejected by both German and French courts when deciding factually equivalent situations.

This study analyses five leading English cases in a comparative and economic way and questions the validity of their assumptions as well as their arguments in the light of the recent important decision of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights in Osman v. UK.

This thought-provoking book, written by two English academics from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, in collaboration with two leading authorities from the Universities of Paris and Munich, should provide food for thought for judges, practitioners, academics and students for years to come.

This book will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners interested in public law, human rights, comparative methodology, and tort law.