Bottom-Up Lawmaking: The Private Origins of Transnational Law

This article introduces one way in which the private sector makes law- bottom-up transnational lawmaking. While this article explores one example in depth- the Berne Union\u27s regulation of export credit insurance- it concludes that bottom-up lawmaking peppers our legal landscape in a profound and largely unacknowledged way. More specifically, this article discusses how the private sector engages in international lawmaking and contemplates the normative implications of privatized transnational lawmaking. Democracy and the Transnational Private Sector, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington, April 12-13, 2007

A Bottom-Up Approach to International Lawmaking: The Tale of Three Trade Finance Instruments

International law often makes storytellers of onlookers. The stories that gain scholarly and popular traction are of a common genre, focusing on international law from the top down. They typically center on a state\u27s treaty-based commitments or on an intergovernmental institution born from a treaty. They open with diplomats at majestic negotiating tables, secluded in remote yet pristine locations, wrangling politely over the text of a treaty. The climaxes are photo-opportunity events-a treaty-signing ceremony or the founding of a new institution. The denouement is the trickle-down, the inevitably imperfect business of translating international law into domestic or transnational practice. This traditional, top-down international lawmaking story tells of state actors making international law and imposing it on others who may have been quite removed, geographically and politically, from the entire lawmaking process

Bottom-Up Lawmaking: The Private Origins of Transnational Law

This article introduces one way in which the private sector makes law- bottom-up transnational lawmaking. While this article explores one example in depth- the Berne Union\u27s regulation of export credit insurance- it concludes that bottom-up lawmaking peppers our legal landscape in a profound and largely unacknowledged way. More specifically, this article discusses how the private sector engages in international lawmaking and contemplates the normative implications of privatized transnational lawmaking. Democracy and the Transnational Private Sector, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington, April 12-13, 2007