ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

will demonstrate that OTC derivative markets are, in
fact, ‘filled to the brim with legal expertise, scrutiny, and
analysis’. Taking a closer look at some of this law, with a
particular focus on legal regimes that facilitate speculative
trading in commodity derivatives, I will draw call
into question legal ‘boundries’ between regulated and
unregulated; between public and private. I will demonstrate
that is not just that borders drawn by laws that
are problematic: line-drawing within the legal discipline
creates problems as well.
Jed Odermatt: Defining European Legal Space
The issue of jurisdiction continues to be a muchdebated
topic in international law. This issue is arguably
made more complex with regard to the European
Union, which, unlike a state, does not itself possess
territory. In a number of cases the Court of Justice of
the European Union (CJEU) has been called upon to
determine the ‘legal space’ of the Union and to set out
the legal limits that international law imposes on the
EU’s jurisdiction. Global phenomena such as climate
change and the internet have challenged traditional
understandings of jurisdiction. This paper discusses
how the CJEU has approached the question of EU
‘legal space’. How do principles of jurisdiction apply
differently in relation to a regional organization? How
have these questions been informed by principles of
public international law? It argues that EU judicial practice
also contributes to our understanding about how
the concept of jurisdiction is applied in the context of
regional integration organizations.
Ida Ilmatar Koivisto: Transparency in and of
Global Administrative Space
The space in which global governance operates
is transnational. Global Administrative Law (GAL),
as many other normative accounts too, sees this
emerged state of affairs as a problem of overall
‘knowability’ and legitimacy of governance. As a
solution, it seeks to formulate and harness global
governance with vocabulary administrative law, traditionally
peculiar to states. In territorial terms, global
administrative space is argued to exist. This presentation
delves into the meaning of transparency in
understanding the nature of that space. I argue that
unlike other GAL principles, transparency has a dual
role both as a cognitive precondition for the space
itself to be detected (constitutive function) and as a
procedural principle for the regimes functioning in
the space (legitimating function). Due to this doubleedged
importance and, debatably, discursive overuse,
transparency needs to be taken seriously and approached
critically.
9 REALM OF BORDERS OR PROMISED
LAND FOR GLOBAL LAWYERS?
QUESTIONS AND ISSUES OF
COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES IN
PUBLIC LAW
The panel will discuss the most relevant methodological
challenges in comparative legal studies from the
public lawyer’s perspective. The panelists will discuss,
among other issues, the relationship between comparative
law and legal nationalism; the relevance of
legal families’ theories; the impact of macro-regional
integration and globalization; the usefulness of a separation
between constitutional law and administrative
law (if any); the different role played by legislators, bureaucrats,
judges, and private actors; the importance of
global indicators and of competition between governments;
the perspective of a methodological renewal
and its main recipes.
Participants Marta Cartabia
Christoph Möllers
Giulio Napolitano
Guy Seidman
Javier Barnes
Name of Chair Sabino Cassese
Room UL9 213
Marta Cartabia: Legal comparison in
fundamental rights
Christoph Möllers: Legal comparison in
constitutional law
There is no methodological state of the art in comparative
constitutional law (CCL). The reason for that
is that legal research even if it claims to be “critical”
tries to participate in the political authority of a legal
order. Comparative constitutionalism does not have
this kind of authority: Neither does it belong to a political
community nor can it claim the rational authority of
the Roman law tradition that supports private law. Yet,
comparative constitutional studies yearn for such an
authority. This explains the persistence of stale (and
not really comparative) debates like that one on the
relevance of foreign materials in domestic law. But
CCL should get rid of such claims. It should become
radically conceptual, developing conceptual schemes
as a basis of comparison that are independent from
a given legal order. And it should become radically
empirical, pursuing the development of legal concepts
with quantitative means. Only by working conceptually
CCL can define a disciplinary identity beyond the
political sciences.
Concurring panels 35