Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Beyond Westphalia: Competitive Legalization In Emerging Transnational Regulatory Systems, Errol E. Meidinger

Errol Meidinger

Published as Chapter 7 in Law and Legalization in Transnational Relations, Christian Brütsch & Dirk Lehmkuhl, eds.

This paper analyzes several emerging transnational regulatory systems that engage, but are not centered on state legal systems. Driven primarily by civil society organizations, the new regulatory systems use conventional technical standard setting and certification techniques to establish market-leveraged, social and environmental regulatory programs. These programs resemble state regulatory programs in many important respects, and are increasingly legalized. Individual sectors generally have multiple regulatory programs that compete with, but also mimic and reinforce each other. While forestry is the most developed example, similar …

Astroturf Activism, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

Corporate influence in government is more than a national issue; it is an international phenomenon. For years, businesses have been infiltrating international legal processes. They secretly lobby lawmakers through front groups: “astroturf” imitations of grassroots organizations. But because this business lobbying is covert, it has been underappreciated in both the literature and the law. This Article unearths the “astroturf activism” phenomenon. It offers an original descriptive account that classifies modes of business access to international officials and identifies harms, then develops a critical analysis of the laws that regulate this access. I show that the perplexing set of access rules …