Book Workshop: Between Interests and Law: The Politics of Commercial Disputes under Private Institutions and Public Authority

If you would like to attend this event please register by emailing Matthew Kennedy ( matthew.kennedy@politics.ox.ac.uk). Draft chapters of the book manuscript will be sent, in advance of the event, to those that confirm they are attending.

Transnational commercial dispute resolution is fundamental to global economic exchange, yet to date has been relatively understudied by political scientists. How can we explain the emergence of commercial arbitration as one of the world’s most successful providers of global public goods, and what are its implications? Did the commercial arbitration regime develop in response to the material interests of private firms, or as the diffusion of legal norms and practices?

On 21 May, GEG and the Center for International Studies (CIS) of the Department of Politics and International Relations will co-host a book manuscript workshop on GEG Senior Researcher Tom Hale’s book-in-progress on these topics. Tom’s book, which builds off his doctoral thesis, explores how states and private actors have sought to provide the necessary rule of law to facilitate global economic exchanges in a world divided between nearly 200 sovereign states. It traces the emergence of the current tripartite, hybrid system in which private, transnational judges’ decisions are enforced in domestic courts under international law. The book draws on a series of global surveys of corporate attitudes toward dispute resolution, archival and statistical research on the diffusion of intergovernmental treaties concerning commercial arbitration, and detailed case studies of the United States, China and Argentina.

The workshop will consist of three sessions:

12:00 Light lunch

12:15 – 1:30 Two theories of commercial disputes under private institutions and public authority

Chair:

• Kalypso Nicolaidis (Professsor of International Relations, Oxford University)

Discussants:

• Walter Mattli (Professor of International Political Economy, Oxford University)
• Duncan Snidal (Professor of International Relations, Oxford University)
• Jan Kleinheisterkampf (Associate Professor of Law, LSE)

1:45 – 3:00 The development of the regime for commercial disputes over the "long" 20th century

Discussants:

• Lauge Poulsen (Postdoctoral research fellow, Nuffield College)
• Taylor St. John (Dphil Candidate, University of Oxford)

3:15 - 4:30 The reception of the regime outside the West: Argentina and China

Discussants:

• Christian Arnold (Departmental Lecturer in the International Relations of Latin America, Oxford University)
• Anthony Dicks (Emeritus Professor of Chinese Law, School of Oriental and African Studies)