This year's World Legal Forum conference will take place on December 7th and 8th in The Hague. The topic is "Private International Regulation and Public Supervision." The program is available here, here, and here. Here's the description:International lawmaking and regulation is a process in which private parties fulfil a more important role than is often visible. They often regulate their international affairs in standard contracts or through international sectoral norms and therefore may be missed by the public eye; international media and politics. Without the involvement of public actors their regulation is often highly effective but their legitimacy is limited to the scope of the committed parties within the sector. As long as the business is going well this kind of self-regulation may be the most time- and cost- effective method. However, these mechanisms may need public supervision in situations when: technical aspects of contracts are so complicated that subsequently in-depth experts need to be more structurally involved to stimulate sustainable international dispute resolution; damage is caused to third parties (often citizens) outside the framework that provides the international private rules; the company operates in states with an ineffective regulatory system where private norms are hardly applicable or enforceable.
Therefore, serious accountability gaps remain. The question therefore is how the government should intervene. On the one hand, to what extent should and could private parties fulfil the function of international regulator? On the other hand, the focus should be on how to create effective supervision while still benefitting from the effectiveness of private regulation. In the above situations new international consensual or legal instruments need to be created.
