Conversations : Globalization and Law Aravind Ganesh

Anthony Pagden is the Distinguished Professor of Political Science and History at UCLA, and has in the past been affiliated with Oxford, Cambridge, the EUI (Florence), and Johns Hopkins University. 
 Easily one of the most important intellectual historians alive, Anthony Pagden has written extensively on European, and in particular Spanish history, with a special focus on the relationship between the peoples of Europe and its overseas settlements and those of the non-European world from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In this episode, Anthony joins us to discuss his latest book, The Pursuit of Europe: A History (OUP 2022), which traces the history of the idea of European Unification, starting from the end of the Napoleonic Wars right through to Brexit. The book details the various attempts to deal with the question of how to create a united Europe after centuries of internecine conflict, while at the same time preserving the political, legal, and cultural integrity of the individual nations, many of which had had extensive imperial holdings until the end of the WWII. The resulting entity, Anthony argues in the book, is to be regarded neither as a ‘super-state’ nor an empire, but a new post-national order united in a political life based, not upon the old shibboleths of nationalism and patriotism, but upon a body of common values and aspirations. 

Antoine is a Senior Researcher at the TMC Asser Instituut, where he coordinates the research strand on 'Advancing Public Interests in International and European Law'. He obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in 2015 after defending a thesis on the interaction between the lex sportiva (the private regulations governing international sports) and EU Law.

He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the ASSER International Sports Law Blog, founder and editor of the Yearbook of International Sports Arbitration, and a member of the editorial board of the International Sports Law Journal and International Sports Law book Series of Asser Press. His research focuses on the role of private actors in transnational law, using the lex sportiva as his main case study.

Signe Rehling Larsen is the author of The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union  (OUP 2021), as well as European Public Law after Empires, European Law Open (2022). In these strikingly original works, she argues, contrary to settled assumptions, that the European Union is neither a unique nor an unprecedented political structure, but one that has a venerable ideal in the form of the 'federation', as well as an uncomfortable relationship with the imperial heritage of its Member States. 
Signe is currently an Examination Fellow in Law at Magdalen College, Oxford University. She obtained her doctorate in 2018 from the London School of Economics, after which she held a Max Weber postdoctoral fellowship at the European University Institute. She has also spent time at the New School for Social Research in New York, Bard College Berlin, and the University of Copenhagen. 

Janne Nijman and Helmut Aust join us to talk about their recently published Research Handbook on International Law and Cities (Edward Elgar 2021), co-edited with the assistance of Miha Marchenko. The book, which was awarded the ESIL (European Society of International Law) Collaborative Book Prize in 2022, is the result of a long process of collaboration and numerous conferences, involving several experts in the field of international law and cities. 

Leading the podcast today is Carlo Colombo, Assistant Professor of Administrative Law and Governance at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. Carlo is a contributor to the Research Handbook mentioned above. Also appearing on the podcast is the regular host, Aravind Ganesh.

Janne Nijman is Professor of History and Theory of International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam and Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Helmut Aust is Professor of Law at Free University Berlin where he teaches public and international law. 

Evan Fox-Decent is Full Professor at the Faculty of Law at McGill University in Montreal, where he has held a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Cosmopolitan Law and Justice since October 2019. He is the author of several books such as Sovereignty’s Promise: The State as Fiduciary (OUP 2012) and - together with his regular co-author Evan Criddle (William & Mary Law School) - Fiduciaries of Humanity: How International Law Constitutes Authority (OUP 2016). As these titles indicate, Evan’s research interests span both private and public law, and his project may be described as one of trying to explicate the concept of sovereignty in public law by analogy to the ideas of fiduciary rights and obligations in private law.

In this episode, Evan talks to us about his recent article, Mandatory Multilateralism (American Journal of International Law, 2019), again co-authored with Evan Criddle. The article is the basis of a forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Governing a Divided World: Mandatory Cooperation under International Law.

Our guest for today is Katharina Pistor, the Edwin B Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School, where she also heads the Center on Global Legal Transformation. Besides these appointments, Katharina is a research associate with the Centre for Economic Policy Research, has served as principal investigator of the Global Finance and Law Initiative (2011–2013), and as a board member (2011–2014) and fellow (2019) of the European Corporate Governance Institute. Together with Martin Hellwig she was awarded the 2012 Max Planck Research Award on International Financial Regulation, and in 2015 she was elected a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.

A renowned expert in comparative law, company law, bankruptcy, law and finance, as well as the regulation of cryptocurrencies, she is the author of several groundbreaking articles such as ‘A Legal Theory of Finance’ in the Journal of Comparative Economics (2013), and ‘From Territorial to Monetary Sovereignty’ in Theoretical Inquiries in Law (2017). Our discussion for this episode, however, is about her 2019 bestseller The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton UP).

Joining me on the interview is André Nuñes Chaïb, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. The podcast was edited by Renaud Callaert.