Cambridge Studies in Transnational Law – serie

Today, a transnational constellation of 'rule of law' experts advise on 'good' legal systems to countries in the Global South. Yet these experts often claim that the 'rule of law' is nearly impossible to define, and they frequently point to the limits of their own expertise. In this innovative book, Deval Desai identifies this form of expertise as 'expert ignorance'. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Desai draws on insights from legal theory, sociology, development studies, and performance studies to explore how this paradoxical form of expertise works in practice. With a range of illustrative cases that span both global and local perspectives, this book considers the impact of expert ignorance on the rule of law and on expert governance more broadly. Contributing to the study of transnational law, governance, and expertise, Desai demonstrates the enduring power of proclaiming what one does not know. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book deals with a key feature of globalization: the rise of regulation beyond the state. It examines the emergence of transnational regulatory cooperation between public and private actors and pursues an inquiry that is at once legal, empirical and theoretical. It asks why a private actor and an international organization would regulate cooperatively and what this tells us about the material meaning of concepts such as 'expertise', 'authority' and 'legitimacy' in specific domains of global governance. Additionally, the book addresses the structures and patterns in which cooperation evolves and how this affects the broader global order. It does so through an investigation of two public-private cooperative agreements: one between the International Standards Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Global Compact and the International Labor Organization and one between the International Olympic Committee and the United Nations Environment Programme.