Lübbe-Wolff: Democracy, Separation of Powers, and International Treaty-making

Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff (Universität Bielefeld - Law; formerly, Judge, Bundesverfassungsgericht, Germany) has published Democracy, Separation of Powers, and International Treaty-making The example of TTIP (Current Legal Problems, Vol. 69, pp. 175-198, 2016). Here's the abstract:

An ever greater part of our national law is determined by international and supranational law. I will argue that in present circumstances, existing frameworks and practices concerning international treaty-making on European Union (EU) and national levels, and the underlying concept of separation of powers, are no longer adequate to secure the democratic character of governance by international treaty-making.

The inappropriateness of current practices is best illustrated by treaties such as TTIP, the ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’, a free trade and investment protection agreement currently negotiated between the EU and the USA. I will therefore give an outline of what TTIP and related free trade agreements (FTAs) are about, and of the rules and practices governing the negotiation and conclusion of such agreements, before I come to explain why some of these rules and practices are untenable, and why and how they ought to be changed.