The World Trade Organization (WTO) arguably shapes regulatory governance in more countries to a greater extent than any other international organization. Professor Gregory Shaffer will provide a new framework for assessing the broader regulatory implications of the WTO within nation states, as opposed to viewing the WTO as a form of global governance above the nation state. It first examines seven types of changes required for national law and legal practice, which affect how the state raises revenue, how the state spends it, and the principles the state applies to regulation. The paper then assesses four broader dimensions of regulatory change catalyzed by WTO rules: (i) changes in the boundary between the market and the state (involving concomitantly market liberalization and growth of the administrative state); (ii) changes in the relative authority of institutions within the state (promoting bureaucratized and judicialized governance); (iii) changes in professional expertise engaging with state regulation (such as the role of lawyers); and (iv) changes in normative frames and accountability mechanisms for national regulation (which are liberal and transnational in scope). In practice, these four dimensions of change interact and build on each other. The paper presents what we know to date and a framework for conducting further empirical study.

Guest Speaker:

Gregory Shaffer is the Melvin C. Steen Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He previously was Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, Director of the university’s European Union Center of Excellence, Co-Director of its Center on World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE), and Wing-Tat Lee Chair at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College and his J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School. He practiced law in Paris for seven years for Coudert Frères and Bredin Prat, where he was a member of the Paris bar.

Professor Shaffer has published extensively in the areas of international trade law, global governance, and globalization's impact on domestic regulation. Professor Shaffer's work is cross-disciplinary and empirical, addressing such topics as public-private networks in international trade litigation; comparative institutional approaches to trade-social policy conflicts; and national regulation in global context.

Introduction & Comments:

Allen S. Weiner: Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation, Senior Lecturer in Law, Stanford Law School

William H. Simon: Arthur Levitt Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

Sergio Puig: Lecturer in Law and Teaching Fellow in the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford Law School

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