Regulatory Standards, Legitimate Authority and the Adjudicatory Role
Part V contains two chapters, Chapter Nine and Chapter Ten. These chapters return to the conceptual questions raised by the emergence of global regulatory standards in international courts and tribunals. Chapter Nine evaluates overall how the standards preserve, enhance or undermine international law’s claim to legitimate authority. Broadly, the standards appear to strengthen traditional procedural justifications of authority. However, substantively they contribute only partially to an ideal balancing of international interests and do not promise the co-ordination between domestic and international legal orders needed for international law better to serve its subjects by better balancing competing global interests. More is not to be expected, though. International courts and tribunals remain formally and socially constrained; inter alia the parties’ pleadings are often influential. Greater international political involvement in the development of global regulatory standards would be appropriate, especially in relation to the possible future adoption of regulatory coherence tests that might require proportionality in regulatory action.