Law and Development

September 21, 2021

Paid Short-term Consultancy: Legal and Policy Researcher (Parental Leave Cover)

Key information:

This event is a part of Columbia Academy on Law in Global Affairs (CALGA), a series of online open-access events, in which Columbia Law School faculty present their research and debate current issues with colleagues from around the globe.

August 5, 2021

The Afronomicslaw.org Academic Forum invites you to join their next guest lecture series. 

Title

Africa as a “Theatre” of International Law and Development: Knowledge, Practice and Resistance

Date: Aug 7, 2021

Time: 17:00 CAT/ 18:00 EAT

To mark the 2021 International Women’s Day themed #Choose to Challenge, Afronomicslaw.org celebrates Professsor Olufunmilayo Arewa’s brilliant contributions to Transactional Law and Intellectual Property Law. Murray H. Shusterman Professor of Transactional and Business Law at Temple University Beasely School of Law, Professor Arewa has worked as a consultant on various projects, including engagements relating to education and scientific and technological capacity in Africa. She was also the lead consultant on a project examining the feasibility of establishing a venture capital fund in the Eastern Caribbean.

To mark the 2021 International Women’s Day themed #Choose to Challenge, Afronomicslaw.org celebrates Dr Clair Gammage’s brilliant contributions to International Trade Law and Development. Dr Gammage is an Associate Professor in International Economic Law at the University of Bristol. She has given expert evidence at the European and UK Parliaments on matters relating to trade policy.

Traditional international law (IL) teaching and research has reached an inflection point (TRILA Report, 24).  Content-wise it has long been monopolised by the usual suspects: sources of law, treaties, statehood, territory, jurisdiction and specific values such as universality and equality among states. The most conservative IL scholars will smirk at the thought of alternative ‘transnational’ or ‘Third World’ approaches to IL. To be fair to them, lawyers are fond of compartmentalising. We have those that do private law, public law, human rights, international economic law, law and development, business and human rights law, health law, dispute resolution law, to name a few. Yet as the current pandemic is showing this type of boxed thinking cannot provide the tools for meaningful teaching and research about today’s legal conundrums. We live in an uncertain world in which one issue can raise a myriad of legal problems that straddle multiple fields of law.

This article will briefly examine this dynamic across three interconnected dimensions:  (1) flexibility and innovation in IEL agreement models, with a focus on trade agreements, that better integrate economic and social development goals and allow parties to adapt to new circumstances or phase in commitments on a more incremental basis; (2) flexibility in implementation of trade disciplines and agreements; and (3) legal and regulatory innovation that can both define and flow from IEL agreements.  These three dimensions take into account both treaties themselves and how they relate to changes in law and regulation in practice, drawing a link between international agreements and their operation that is particularly important in times of change or uncertainty.  In assessing dimension three, legal and regulatory innovation, which has been a focus of my work over the past decade,

The question of a regulatory framework for this type of CSR at the African Union level is paramount. Such regulatory frameworks could be meta-regulatory in nature and thus embrace a mix of soft law and hard law rules with incentives. This need for policy and regulation is recognised in the African Union Agenda 2063 framework document both in order to effectively finance development objectives and to enable full exploitation of the partnership capabilities in the interest of Africa. The African Union has also pursued this set goal for agribusiness as a result of the Malabo declaration on accelerated agricultural growth commitments

The interconnectedness of commercial and other mundane human transactions has never been more reified than it is since the advent of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). However, it bears observing that ICTs have helped in harnessing virtually every human and non-human endeavour into their commercial ramifications

To finalise our International Women’s Day symposium on scholarship by women, this post highlights some women working on International Economic Law (IEL) that the editorial team put together in the last couple of days. This post is therefore by no means intended to be exhaustive. We encourage our readers to add to our list. Next year with more time, we hope to have an even more extensive list of women working in IEL.