HiiL Selects Subsidy Recipient for 2008 Transnational Constitutionality Tender

Professor Dr. Joost H.B. Pauwelyn, together with his colleagues Prof. Dr. Gabrielle Marceau, Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters, and Prof. Dr. Ramses A. Wessel, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, designed the project in response to HiiL’s 2008 call for project proposals responding to the question,
“How can forms of informal international public policy-making be made more democratic and accountable?”
Prof. Pauwelyn’s proposal was selected from a number of high-quality proposals submitted by several highly-qualified applicants.

The NIL Project is empirical and multidisciplinary. International cooperation is taking place at a scope and in a variety of forms never witnessed before. Yet, are people and democratically elected politicians losing their grip on this cooperation? Is this cooperation increasingly escaping the needed constraints of both domestic and international law, and somehow falling between two chairs in some sort of “accountability gap”? Answers and progress on this pressing societal problem must be empirically grounded, based on an examination of what is actually happening and subsequently tested to the cutting edge theories in all of the relevant academic disciplines. This is what the NIL project proposes to do, with the aim of providing a concrete map of the action and specific proposals for reform where needed.  Phase 1 will infiltrate and describe “informal international public policy-making” (“new international law”), focusing on activity in Geneva and Brussels. This “mapping” will unearth what is actually happening and how. Phase 2 will identify and explain similarities and differences in design of this “new international law”. This “testing” phase will apply existing concepts of accountability and effectiveness to these designs. Phase 3 will offer reform suggestions. Junior researchers will play a crucial role in phase 1, and cooperation between lawyers and IR scholars in the form of training and workshops will be indispensable in phase 2.  The project is also supported by the Graduate Institute’s Centre for Trade and Economic Integration, Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, and the University of Twente are also making some contributions to the project.


Prof. Dr. Joost H.B. Pauwelyn is a Professor of International Economic Law and WTO Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.  Previously he was Professor of International Law at Duke University (USA). He received his Bachelor’s degree in law (Cand. Jur.), cum laude, from the University of Namur, Belgium; his Master’s degree in law (Lic. Jur.), magna cum laude, from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, his Magister Juris, with first class honours, from the University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, UK, and Ph.D. in law, from the University of Neuchtel, Switzerland.  He has taught at Neuchâtel, Columbia, NYU and Georgetown law schools and worked as legal adviser for the WTO Secretariat (1996-2002). He specializes in international economic law, in particular trade law and investment law, and its relationship to public international law. Professor Pauwelyn is also Senior Advisor with the law firm of King & Spalding LLP in Washington DC and frequently advises governments and industry in WTO dispute settlement. He is the author, more recently, of The Transformation of World Trade, Human Rights and International Trade and Conflict of Norms in Public International Law (Guggenheim Prize, 2005).

Prof. Dr. Gabrielle Marceau is one of the top lawyers at the WTO, an Associate Professor at Geneva University Law School, and also is a prolific scholar, with two books and over 50 articles and essays in the fields of WTO law and international economic law, including the revered Antidumping and Antitrust Issues in Free-Trade Areas, published with Oxford University Press and reprinted three times so far. She has been one of the four Counsellors to the Cabinet of Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the WTO, since 2005. She previously was Counsellor for the Legal Affairs Division of the WTO Secretariat for more than ten years. Gabrielle Marceau also taught at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), Monash Law School and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. A founding member of the Society of International Economic Law and a member of several working groups of the International Law Association, she holds a Ph.D. from University College London and the London School of Economics, an LL.M. from the London School of Economics and LL.B. from the University of Sherbrooke. Her career profile has been the subject of an extensive presentation in the journal International Law FORUM du droit international.

Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters is a professor of international law and the law of international organizations and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and the Institute for International Law at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He is also visiting professor at the College of Europe, Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Council on International Affairs of the Flemish Government, and President of the United Nations Association Flanders-Belgium. He practises law as Of Counsel at Linklaters in Brussels. He studied law and philosophy in Antwerp and Yale University (LLM 1990), worked as a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School and defended his PhD at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He has held teaching positions at the Universities of Antwerp, Liège and Maastricht and worked previously as référendaire at the European Court of Justice. He is the editor of the International Encyclopedia of Intergovernmental Organizations, is vice-director of the Revue belge de droit international and participates in the European Network of Excellence Connex (Connecting Excellence in European Governance). Prof. Wouters has published widely on international law and international organisations, European Union law and corporate and financial law, including a recent comprehensive handbook on public international law (with M. Bossuyt), a book on the World Trade Organization (with B. De Meester: The World Trade Organization: A Legal and Institutional Analysis, Intersentia, 2007) as well as a number of edited books, including Conflict Prevention. Policy and Legal Aspects (T.M.C. Asser Press, 2004), Legal Instruments in the Fight Against International Terrorism (Martinus Nijhof, 2004) and The United Nations and the European Union. An Ever Stronger Partnership (T.M.C. Asser Press, 2006).

Prof. Dr. Ramses A. Wessel is Professor of the Law of the European Union and other International Organizations and Co-Director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He is Director of the European Studies programs and Senior Research Fellow of the University’s Institute for Governance Studies. His additional functions include: Member of the Governmental Advisory Committee on Issues of Public International Law, Editor-in-Chief and founder of the International Organizations Law Review, Editor-in-Chief of the Dutch journal and yearbook on peace and security, Vrede en Veiligheid, and member of the Editorial Board of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law and the Internationale Spectator. Ramses Wessel graduated in 1989 at the University of Groningen in International Law and International Relations and subsequently worked at the same university (1989-1991) and at the Department of International and European Institutional Law at Utrecht University (1991-2000). He is the author of The European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy: A Legal Institutional Perspective (Kluwer Law International, 1999) and of number of other publications in the field of international and European law. His general research interests lie in the field of international and European institutional law, with a focus on the law of international organizations, peace and security, European foreign, security and defence policy and EU external relations in general.