Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Discussion Group 2, “Corporate Power and Accountability in Global Value Chains: Human Rights, Sustainability, Labor, and Technology,” at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference on July 29, 2026.

Thank you all for joining us for what I expect will be a timely and intellectually engaging discussion about one of the central challenges confronting business, international, and comparative law today: the changing relationship among corporate power, global value chains, and legal accountability.

It is a pleasure to welcome such a distinguished and interdisciplinary group of participants. One of the greatest benefits of the SEALS discussion-group format is its ability to move beyond traditional disciplinary divisions. Today’s exchange connects corporate law, international law, human rights, labor law, environmental law, commercial law, technology law, international trade, development, and governance. I hope everyone will feel comfortable contributing insights drawn from their own experiences and areas of expertise.

The structure of the global economy has changed substantially during the past several decades.

Modern multinational corporations rarely produce goods entirely within a single jurisdiction. Production is instead organized through complex international networks of subsidiaries, suppliers, contractors, logistics providers, digital platforms, financial institutions, and investors operating across dozens of countries.

Global value chains have created remarkable economic opportunities. In many regions of the world, they have supported innovation, international trade, investment, and poverty reduction.

At the same time, these networks have produced serious governance problems.

When environmental harm occurs...

When forced labor or child labor is identified...

When dangerous working conditions result in tragedy...

When Indigenous communities are deprived of access to traditional lands...

When digital platforms transform labor markets...

Or when artificial intelligence begins assigning tasks and monitoring workers...

A fundamental legal question immediately follows:

Who bears responsibility?

Should responsibility remain with the immediate supplier?

Does it also reach the parent corporation?

Should investors accept some degree of responsibility?

What responsibilities should be assigned to banks, insurers, auditors, certification organizations, ESG rating agencies, and digital platforms?

Perhaps more importantly:

Who should provide meaningful remedies to the workers and communities affected?

For many years, the business and human rights debate concentrated largely on establishing norms.

Today, however, we appear to be moving into a new phase.

The discussion is increasingly shifting from whether corporations should conduct human rights due diligence to how those responsibilities should be implemented, monitored, evaluated, and enforced in practice.

This transition introduces difficult institutional questions.

Can mandatory due diligence create meaningful changes in corporate conduct?

Or might it become another compliance process, focused mainly on records and documentation rather than tangible outcomes?

Are disclosure requirements adequate?

Should the scope of civil liability be broadened?

Should criminal liability assume a more prominent role?

Can market incentives effectively supplement public regulation?

Or are entirely different institutional models necessary?

Recent political developments have made these questions even more complicated.

Across the world, regulatory expansion and retrenchment are occurring simultaneously.

Some jurisdictions continue to adopt stronger sustainability duties and mandatory due diligence requirements.

Others are reconsidering, weakening, or withdrawing regulatory initiatives due to concerns about competitiveness, administrative costs, geopolitical pressures, and economic uncertainty.

This development presents another important question for our discussion:

Are legal systems developing a coherent global framework for corporate accountability, or are we entering a period defined by regulatory fragmentation and competing approaches to governance?

Technology adds another layer of complexity.

Artificial intelligence, blockchain, satellite monitoring, digital traceability systems, remote sensing, and automated auditing offer the potential for unprecedented transparency across global supply chains.

However, these technologies also create additional concerns.

Greater transparency may produce more extensive surveillance.

Algorithmic monitoring can reduce workers’ autonomy.

Digital certification systems may exclude smaller producers without sufficient financial or technological resources.

Artificial intelligence may strengthen compliance while also reproducing established inequalities.

Technology should therefore not be treated only as a solution.

It is becoming an integral part of the governance challenge itself.

I also hope that our conversation will preserve a genuinely international and comparative perspective.

Discussions of corporate accountability too often concentrate almost exclusively on Europe and North America.

However, many of the most serious consequences of global value-chain regulation are experienced in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other emerging economies. Suppliers, workers, local companies, and communities in these regions frequently carry the greatest compliance burdens while having access to the fewest institutional resources.

This imbalance reminds us that accountability cannot be evaluated only by whether corporations issue improved reports or create increasingly sophisticated compliance materials.

Accountability must ultimately be assessed through real outcomes.

Are workers receiving stronger protection?

Do affected communities have access to meaningful remedies?

Are environmental harms decreasing?

Can businesses compete under fairer conditions?

Are legal systems genuinely improving corporate conduct, or are they simply creating more procedural obligations?

I believe these are the questions that should guide our conversation today.

As always, I encourage everyone to participate actively. Please question assumptions, develop ideas introduced by others, contribute comparative experiences from different jurisdictions, and feel free to disagree. The objective of this session is not to reach complete consensus. It is to examine the difficult institutional and legal choices increasingly shaping the relationship among business, globalization, sustainability, and human rights.

With that purpose in mind, I would like to begin with our opening question:

Do you believe the business and human rights movement has progressed from developing norms to securing meaningful implementation, or does a substantial enforcement gap remain? If that gap persists, where do you identify the most significant obstacles?

Thank you all for being here. I look forward to what I am confident will be an engaging and valuable discussion.

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/08/08/opening-remarks-discussion-group-2-corporate-power-and-accountability-in-global-value-chains-human-rights-sustainability-labor-and-technology-seals-annual-conference-july-29-2026/

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Discussion Group 1, “Governing Digital Transformation: Regulatory Competition, Institutional Capacity, and the Future of Rights,” at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference on July 29, 2026.

Thank you all for being here.

I am delighted to welcome such an exceptional group of scholars, practitioners, and colleagues representing different areas of law. One of the defining strengths of the SEALS discussion-group format is its ability to unite participants with varied expertise, methods, and viewpoints. Rather than delivering formal presentations, our aim is to foster an open, interactive, and interdisciplinary exchange where everyone is encouraged to participate.

Digital transformation can no longer be understood solely as a technological development. It is now also a constitutional, administrative, commercial, international, and societal phenomenon. Artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, digital platforms, blockchain technologies, cybersecurity, and increasingly autonomous systems are transforming not only the subjects regulated by law but also the ways in which law is developed, interpreted, enforced, and experienced.

For lawyers, these developments raise several fundamental questions.

Can existing legal institutions govern technologies that advance more rapidly than legislative and judicial procedures?

Should regulatory systems prioritize innovation, precaution, economic competitiveness, or the protection of fundamental rights?

Who should govern emerging technologies in practice? Should responsibility belong to national legislatures, administrative agencies, courts, international organizations, technical standard-setting bodies, private corporations, or some combination of these actors?

These issues are becoming even more complicated because digital governance is increasingly global.

For many years, conversations about technology regulation centered primarily on the United States and the European Union. The regulatory landscape, however, has become considerably more multipolar. China has established sophisticated regulatory approaches with international consequences. India is developing into a major force in digital regulation. Brazil has gained increasing influence in platform governance and data protection. Countries throughout Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East are also creating innovative regulatory frameworks that warrant much greater scholarly consideration.

One question I hope we will examine today is whether legal systems are moving toward shared principles or entering a period of intensifying competition among different regulatory models.

Will interoperable legal systems define the future?

Or are we heading toward digital fragmentation, rival standards, and parallel technological environments?

Institutional capacity is another issue that requires careful examination.

Discussions often focus on drafting stronger laws, but effective governance depends just as much on the institutions charged with implementing those laws. Administrative agencies, judicial bodies, regulatory authorities, competition agencies, cybersecurity institutions, data protection authorities, and corporate compliance systems must now manage technologies of unprecedented technical complexity.

This conversation is therefore concerned with more than regulation.

It is also about governance.

It concerns institutional design.

It concerns legitimacy.

Ultimately, it concerns the preservation of public trust.

Technology also requires us to reconsider many established legal fields.

Artificial intelligence is influencing intellectual property, corporate governance, competition law, employment law, evidence, civil procedure, administrative law, consumer protection, financial regulation, international trade, and constitutional rights.

Legal decisions may increasingly depend on algorithmic systems that are difficult to interpret, difficult to challenge, and sometimes even difficult to connect to an identifiable human decision-maker.

This development calls into question many of the assumptions on which modern legal systems have traditionally depended.

Perhaps the wider question beneath today’s conversation is the following:

Can legal systems preserve both innovation and democracy?

Can they support technological progress while protecting accountability, transparency, fairness, human dignity, and meaningful human supervision?

These are not simply technical matters.

They concern the future relationship among law, technology, markets, governments, and society.

I also hope that today’s discussion will be genuinely international and comparative.

Comparative law is becoming increasingly important because no single jurisdiction possesses all the answers. Examining how different legal systems address shared technological challenges can provide valuable insights. At the same time, comparisons must remain attentive to differences in political structures, institutional traditions, levels of economic development, and cultural settings.

Finally, I encourage everyone to participate actively.

Please feel free to challenge assumptions, express disagreement, ask questions, and develop ideas introduced by others. The objective of this session is not to produce consensus. It is to deepen our collective understanding of the legal, institutional, and normative choices presented by digital transformation.

With that purpose in mind, I would like to begin by asking everyone a straightforward opening question:

Considering developments from the past year or two, what do you regard as the single most important legal or institutional change in the governance of artificial intelligence or digital technologies, and why?

I look forward to hearing your views, and I thank you once again for joining the discussion.

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/08/07/opening-remarks-discussion-group-1-governing-digital-transformation-regulatory-competition-institutional-capacity-and-the-future-of-rights-2026-southeastern-association-of-law-schools-seals/

It was a pleasure to moderate the discussion group “Reimagining Food and Agriculture Governance: Farmers, Animals, Trade, Technology, and Climate Resilience” at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference.

Among the many notable qualities of the SEALS Annual Conference, its discussion-group format remains one of the most intellectually valuable. Instead of presenting a series of formal papers, the format promotes genuine scholarly exchange. Participants representing different institutions, legal fields, and methodological traditions gather not to defend completed work but to consider collectively the questions that increasingly extend beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries.

That collaborative approach influenced our conversation from its opening moments.

From Agricultural Regulation to Food-System Governance

I began the session by proposing that food and agriculture should no longer be treated as narrow or specialized areas of legal regulation. They have instead become major settings where many of the defining challenges of modern governance converge.

Climate change, biodiversity decline, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, international trade, geopolitical uncertainty, public health, corporate concentration, digital platforms, and global value chains are simultaneously changing how food is produced, distributed, regulated, and consumed.

Our discussion therefore opened with a question that initially appeared straightforward:

What should agricultural law and policy seek to accomplish above all else?

Should legal systems give priority to productivity?

Food security?

Food sovereignty?

Environmental sustainability?

Climate resilience?

Animal welfare?

Rural development?

Technological innovation?

Or should the law attempt to balance every one of these goals at the same time?

Participants quickly recognized that contemporary agricultural governance is shaped by the impossibility of maximizing all these objectives simultaneously. Law does not simply select one goal and reject the others. It increasingly must manage unavoidable trade-offs among competing public values.

One example illustrated this difficulty especially well: policymaking resembles a blanket that can never cover every objective completely at the same time. Protecting one interest often leaves another partly uncovered. That image became an informal metaphor for much of the discussion that followed.

Food Systems as Structures of Power

As the conversation developed, attention soon shifted from food production to the distribution of authority within food systems.

Participants repeatedly returned to questions that have become increasingly important within legal scholarship:

Who controls innovation in agriculture?

Who owns the agricultural data produced by increasingly digital farming operations?

Who determines access to seeds, genetic resources, fertilizers, and agricultural technologies?

Who ultimately establishes the rules that govern global food systems?

Rather than examining agriculture only from the standpoint of farming, the discussion increasingly focused on governance itself.

Governments, multinational agribusinesses, international institutions, retailers, financial markets, technology companies, certification organizations, and consumers all appeared as actors exercising different forms of regulatory authority.

Consequently, the conversation became less about agriculture in its traditional sense and more about the institutional systems that govern food production and distribution.

Corporate Concentration Across Global Food Chains

One of the most prominent themes throughout the session was the increasing concentration of economic power within global food chains.

Participants examined consolidation in seed markets, fertilizer manufacturing, meat processing, grocery retail, and food distribution. They questioned whether competition law and corporate governance have responded adequately to these structural developments.

The discussion did not approach concentration solely as an antitrust concern. Instead, participants considered its wider consequences.

How does market concentration alter the bargaining power of farmers?

What effect does it have on food prices?

Does concentration make supply chains more vulnerable to disruption?

Can highly concentrated markets remain resilient during pandemics, climate emergencies, or periods of geopolitical instability?

Several participants stressed that resilience has become an increasingly important legal goal, especially after recent disruptions revealed the vulnerability of highly centralized production systems.

The discussion therefore connected competition policy, corporate governance, international trade, and food security in ways that rarely arise within traditional doctrinal categories.

Technology as Both an Opportunity and a Governance Problem

Artificial intelligence and emerging technologies formed another central part of the session.

Participants considered precision agriculture, robotics, biotechnology, automated decision-making, digital platforms, and agricultural data to be powerful resources that could improve efficiency, reduce resource consumption, enhance irrigation, monitor crop health, and support climate adaptation.

Yet the discussion consistently returned to a broader issue of governance.

Technology does not independently determine social outcomes.

Its economic and social effects depend on the legal and institutional systems within which it is developed and used.

Who owns data generated through agricultural activity?

Who exercises control over AI systems used in farming?

Will technological development expand access to agricultural production, or will it reinforce existing concentrations of economic power?

Rather than understanding artificial intelligence as merely another technological advancement, participants increasingly viewed it as a force reshaping the relationships among farmers, corporations, governments, consumers, and regulatory institutions.

Consumers, Information, and Market Structures

Another especially engaging part of the conversation examined consumer behavior.

Participants considered whether consumers truly shape food markets through their individual decisions or whether purchasing choices are substantially influenced by prices, unequal access to information, marketing practices, and corporate structures.

Examples involving grocery retail, dietary choices, affordability, and food labeling demonstrated how broader market conditions often constrain consumer autonomy.

The conversation naturally expanded to include behavioral economics, transparency, information disclosure, public health, and consumer protection.

One recurring observation was that food that meets existing legal definitions of safety may still contribute to long-term public health concerns.

The distinction among food safety, nutrition, and health generated a particularly thoughtful exchange about what modern food regulation should ultimately seek to achieve.

Comparative Approaches and Scientific Uncertainty

The conversation also developed into a valuable comparative examination of regulatory philosophies.

Participants compared approaches commonly associated with the European Union and the United States, particularly regarding precaution, biotechnology, genetically modified organisms, environmental protection, and food safety regulation.

Instead of treating these approaches as entirely incompatible, the discussion examined the institutional choices supporting different responses to scientific uncertainty.

Should regulators intervene before substantial risks become evident?

Alternatively, should innovation continue until measurable harm is established?

These questions extended well beyond agriculture and connected with broader debates involving administrative law, environmental governance, risk regulation, and evidence-based policymaking.

Looking Beyond Agriculture

As often occurs in successful interdisciplinary exchanges, the conversation eventually expanded well beyond its original subject.

Participants connected food governance with constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, international economic law, corporate governance, behavioral economics, competition law, public health, technology governance, sustainability, and global governance.

Agriculture therefore emerged not as an isolated economic sector but as a setting through which larger legal and governance questions could be studied.

How should democratic institutions regulate increasingly complex technological systems?

How should legal frameworks distribute the costs associated with ecological transition?

How can innovation and justice be reconciled?

How should responsibility be shared among governments, corporations, international institutions, consumers, and local communities?

These questions repeatedly crossed conventional doctrinal boundaries.

Recognizing the Value of Scholarly Conversation

Perhaps the most rewarding feature of the session was not the achievement of consensus but the opportunity to observe the conversation develop.

Each question produced another.

An example offered by one participant generated new comparisons.

Different disciplinary viewpoints gradually came together in a wider discussion concerning governance, institutional design, and the future of food systems.

This intellectual development demonstrates precisely why the SEALS discussion-group model is so valuable.

Instead of producing a collection of disconnected presentations, it provides an environment for authentic scholarly collaboration.

The discussion reaffirmed an observation that has become increasingly clear across many areas of legal research:

Food governance is no longer concerned only with agriculture.

It has become a conversation about how societies address technological change, environmental sustainability, economic concentration, public health, international trade, biodiversity, and democratic accountability simultaneously.

Agriculture may therefore provide one of the most revealing perspectives through which the wider transformation of law can be understood.

I am deeply grateful to all the colleagues whose careful questions, examples, disagreements, and comparative perspectives made this one of the conference’s most engaging and intellectually productive discussions. Their contributions transformed a session concerning agricultural law into a considerably broader conversation about governance in an increasingly interconnected world.

Selected Bibliography and Related Research

The themes considered during this discussion group, including food governance, international trade, climate resilience, sustainability, biotechnology, intellectual property, artificial intelligence, global governance, and the relationship between law and science, draw upon research I have pursued over many years. Readers interested in these issues may find the following scholarship helpful.

Food, Agriculture, Farmers’ Rights, and Sustainable Development

Science, Technology, Policy and International Law. Routledge, 2024.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590213

This volume considers how scientific and technological developments increasingly influence international law and public policy, including matters involving biotechnology, food governance, environmental protection, and sustainable development.

Climate Justice in the Anthropocene and Its Relationship with Science and Technology: The Importance of Ethics of Responsibility. Connecticut Law Review 55 (2023): 819.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4350886

This article examines how climate governance requires the balancing of scientific uncertainty, technological innovation, intergenerational obligations, and environmental justice, all of which increasingly shape agricultural policy and food systems.

International Trade, Global Governance, and Sustainable Agriculture

Global Governance and Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Information Society. In Handbook of Global Science, Technology, and Innovation. Wiley, 2015.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4042956

This chapter explores how institutions of global governance interact with local knowledge, cultural diversity, and sustainable development. These themes are closely connected with Indigenous knowledge and community-based agricultural practices.

Numerous earlier publications examine:

• WTO Law

• International Trade Law

• Sustainable Development

• Environmental Goods and Services

• Climate Governance

• Food Security

• Intellectual Property

• Traditional Knowledge

• Farmers’ Rights

• Biodiversity Governance

These works develop many of the issues considered during the session, including food sovereignty, international trade, technology transfer, environmental protection, and international regulatory cooperation.

Science, Technology, and Agricultural Innovation

Science, Technology, Society and Law. In Science, Technology, Policy and International Law. Routledge, 2024.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590213

This work examines how scientific expertise, technological innovation, and legal institutions interact when addressing complex global concerns, including biotechnology, agriculture, environmental governance, and sustainability.

The Intersections Among Science, Technology, Policy and Law: In Between Truth and Justice. Routledge, 2024.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590214

This work analyzes the institutional connections among scientific knowledge, technological expertise, legal decision-making, and public policy.

The Interlinkages Science–Technology–Law: Information Society, Knowledge Economy and the Rule of Law. Routledge, 2024.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590217

This work considers how technological transformation changes legal institutions, systems of governance, and public decision-making.

Artificial Intelligence, Digital Agriculture, and Governance

Although the session centered on food systems, many of its questions involving precision agriculture, agricultural data, artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and institutional governance are directly connected with my broader research on AI governance.

AI Is Not Just a Technology—It Is a Governance Challenge (Series)

https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/02/8-2-ai-is-not-just-a-technology-it-is-a-governance-challenge/

This series examines how artificial intelligence transforms institutional capacity, governance, public administration, accountability, and the rule of law. These concerns increasingly extend to digital technologies, precision farming, agriculture, and food systems.

Related publications include:

• Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Sustainable Development: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (Routledge, 2026)

• Framing AI’s Role in Achieving SDG 16 (2026)

• Rethinking the Rule of Law for Sustainable Development in the Age of AI (2026)

Public Administration, Institutions, and Governance

Public Administration in the Age of Globalization and Emerging Technologies.

UMKC Law Review 88 (2019): 397.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3610427

This article explores how globalization and emerging technologies transform public administration, regulatory capacity, and institutional governance, issues that have become increasingly important to agricultural transitions and food governance.

Current Research

Epistemic Governance
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6487038

My current research investigates how law organizes the creation, validation, and institutional authority of knowledge. Many issues raised during this discussion, including scientific expertise, biotechnology, food safety, artificial intelligence, climate science, and environmental regulation, ultimately concern who possesses the authority to define knowledge within legal systems and how institutions distribute epistemic responsibility.

Paolo Farah, Paolo Davide Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/08/06/reimagining-food-and-agriculture-governance-law-markets-technology-and-the-future-of-food-systems-at-the-2026-southeastern-association-of-law-schools-seals-annual-conference/

The revised paper is available on SSRN: https://lnkd.in/gsupgXqk

Censorship is not the only mechanism through which knowledge can be controlled.

Freezing funds, attaching conditions to grants, exercising removal authority, restructuring administrative bodies, and imposing compliance obligations can redirect research, constrain expertise, and weaken knowledge-producing institutions without censoring a scientist or prohibiting a book.

Today, I began submitting a revised version of my article, “Epistemic Governance,” to U.S. law reviews.

The revised Article advances a central claim concerning constitutional and public law: authority over knowledge is increasingly exercised through legal, administrative, and financial tools that may appear formally neutral but can significantly alter how expertise is produced and circulated.

The Trump Administration’s actions against universities, federal research initiatives, and independent expert agencies have revealed a constitutional conflict over who possesses the power to govern knowledge. However, the underlying concern extends beyond one administration or a particular political period.

Law has long performed a central role in determining the authority assigned to scientific and technological knowledge. It establishes which forms of expertise receive official recognition, which institutions may speak with authority, which risks are treated as legally significant, and which claims can influence judicial, administrative, and political decisions.

In other words, law does more than accept or assess knowledge created elsewhere. It actively participates in the construction of epistemic authority.

The Article considers whether law can continue functioning as an epistemic gatekeeper amid technoscientific uncertainty, institutional fragmentation, and political polarization. It also examines what occurs when legal mechanisms normally used to organize and sustain knowledge-producing institutions are instead employed to redirect, reorganize, or neutralize them.

The revised Article argues that the legal distribution of epistemic authority has become an urgent yet largely overlooked issue within American public law.

Understanding this challenge requires moving beyond traditional censorship and academic-freedom claims. It demands closer examination of the institutional infrastructure through which knowledge is funded, produced, and validated, and through which it acquires public authority.

The paper is available on SSRN: https://lnkd.in/gsupgXqk

Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed.

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/08/02/who-governs-knowledge-a-revised-version-of-epistemic-governance/

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to contribute a presentation titled “The Use of Force in a Reconfigured Global Legal Order: Venezuela, Iran, China, and the Indo-Pacific” to the Constitutional Law Workshop, “Revisiting the Trump Administration’s Use of Force: International and Constitutional Law Issues,” at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference.

Related series examining the Monroe Doctrine, regional power, and the transformation of global order:
https://lnkd.in/eiHiG7t3

Related examination of Maduro and international criminal law:
https://lnkd.in/eafj2HjB

Moderated by Professors Milena Sterio and Michael Kelly, the panel brought together perspectives from international, constitutional, national security, criminal, and civil rights law. The discussion addressed recent uses of force involving Venezuela, Iran, and suspected drug traffickers operating in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

The conversation examined several foundational questions: Under what circumstances may the United States use force in self-defense? How should the requirement of imminence be interpreted? When must presidential action receive congressional authorization? What remedies remain when standing, political-question, state-secrets, and other justiciability doctrines prevent courts from considering the merits?

In my contribution, I sought to connect these particular controversies to a broader development: the transformation of the international legal order in an increasingly multipolar world.

The question is not limited to whether a specific military operation satisfies Article 2(4) or Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. It is also necessary to consider how repeated departures from established rules, together with a diminishing willingness even to provide legal justifications, influence the authority and legitimacy of the international legal system itself.

In this context, I asked whether the increasingly open disregard for international law by the United States, including its declining willingness to articulate legal grounds for its actions, sets it apart from other major powers. China and Russia regularly challenge, reinterpret, or selectively invoke international law, but they generally continue to frame their conduct through the vocabulary of international legal principles and rules. This leads to a more fundamental question: can persistent noncompliance by great powers cause the international legal order to dissolve, or can that system endure because small and middle powers continue to rely upon and defend a rules-based framework?

International trade provides a useful comparison. The United States and China have substantially destabilized the multilateral trading system, but it has not completely collapsed, partly because other countries continue to depend on it. I suggested that the prohibition against the use of force might display a comparable form of resilience. These issues become particularly significant when examining China’s expanding global role, the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative, and the competing geopolitical, institutional, and legal frameworks through which major powers seek to shape the developing order. International law is not simply being obeyed or violated. Its rules, institutions, spatial concepts, and foundations of authority are being actively reconstructed.

I also emphasized that Venezuela and Iran should not be conflated into a single factual account, and I questioned whether both situations could be accurately described as political succession rather than regime change.

Regarding Venezuela, I challenged the characterization of Maduro’s forcible removal and Delcy Rodríguez’s elevation as nothing more than constitutional succession. Although a substantial portion of the Chavista institutional structure remained in place, Rodríguez’s reported earlier communications with U.S. representatives, followed by American leverage over Venezuelan oil revenue and public policy, indicated a more consequential development: an externally managed reconfiguration of the regime. I argued that this situation could be understood as regime change without the complete replacement of the regime. Much of the existing governing structure was preserved but redirected under a leader who was more willing, or more strongly compelled, to accommodate U.S. strategic and energy objectives. The discussion included arguments that both Venezuela and Iran pursued succession rather than regime change. My intervention asked whether that formal distinction fully reflected what occurred in Venezuela.

Iran presented a different situation. The killing of Ali Khamenei resulted in an externally triggered leadership succession but did not produce the political transformation the Trump Administration appeared to expect. Iran’s existing institutions selected Mojtaba Khamenei despite President Trump’s public insistence that Washington should participate in determining the successor. The outcome preserved the Islamic Republic, reinforced its hard-line and security institutions, and installed leadership even less inclined to cooperate with the United States. I therefore described the result in Iran not as a successfully directed regime change but as evidence of the Trump Administration’s strategic incoherence and serious miscalculation in assuming that leadership decapitation would necessarily lead to political transformation.

Our discussion also emphasized a longer-term institutional consequence. Even if a future administration attempts to restore multilateral cooperation, American allies now understand that U.S. commitments may be reversed. Realpolitik may lead countries to resume cooperation with a more stable United States, but trust developed over many decades cannot be restored immediately. This loss of confidence will, in turn, influence alliances, defense relationships, and international law.

Finally, I underscored the responsibilities of universities and law schools. International and comparative law cannot remain curricular luxuries selected only by a limited group of interested students. These fields must be incorporated across legal education so that future lawyers understand how international rules function within constitutional law, contracts, torts, civil procedure, business law, environmental law, and other areas.

Scholars must likewise communicate beyond specialized publications and academic communities. If legal expertise is to support democratic accountability meaningfully, we must explain these developments, along with their human, institutional, and geopolitical implications, to broader public audiences.

My sincere thanks to Professor Milena Sterio and to every panelist and colleague whose thoughtful contributions created such a substantive and genuinely interdisciplinary conversation.

Related Series and Scholarship

The arguments presented in this contribution develop themes from my earlier four-part series, Monroe Doctrine, Regional Power, and the Legal Reconfiguration of Global Order. That series considered how regional power, strategic geography, networked alliances, infrastructure, trade, and fragmented legal regimes are reshaping the international legal system.

The present discussion applies that analysis to the use of force. The controversies concerning Venezuela and Iran cannot be understood entirely apart from the wider transformation of the global order involving the United States, China, Russia, the Indo-Pacific, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

Series Overview

4.5. Series Overview: Monroe Doctrine, Regional Power, and the Legal Reconfiguration of Global Order
January 26, 2026
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/4-5-series-overview-monroe-doctrine-regional-power-and-the-legal-reconfiguration-of-global-order/

This overview combines the four contributions and develops their shared argument: the Monroe Doctrine has not returned as a formally declared doctrine, but it has reappeared as a structure through which geography, power, law, strategic resources, and regional authority increasingly interact.

Individual Contributions

4.1. The Return of the Monroe Doctrine: Why It Matters Now (and Why Europe Should Care)
January 5, 2026
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/4-1-the-return-of-the-monroe-doctrine-why-it-matters-now-and-why-europe-should-care/

This contribution analyzes the renewed assertion of privileged regional authority in U.S. policy toward Venezuela, Greenland, and Canada. It also considers the consequences for Europe, Ukraine, Taiwan, strategic supply chains, and international alliances.

4.2. From the Monroe Doctrine to the Indo-Pacific: Spheres, Networks, and Transactional Power
January 10, 2026
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/01/10/4-2-from-the-monroe-doctrine-to-the-indo-pacific-spheres-networks-and-transactional-power/

This post compares the network-based regionalism of the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific strategy with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It examines how standards, alliances, financing, infrastructure, interoperability, and supply chains produce competing institutional and legal geographies.

4.3. Legal Geography and the Reconfiguration of Global Order
January 17, 2026
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/01/17/4-3-legal-geography-and-the-reconfiguration-of-global-order/

This contribution interprets contemporary geopolitics as a transformation of legal geography, meaning how law structures territory, connectivity, dependence, access, exclusion, and regional authority.

4.4. Legal Fragmentation and the Future of Global Governance
January 18, 2026
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/4-4-legal-fragmentation-and-the-future-of-global-governance/

This post argues that legal fragmentation is increasingly employed as a deliberate strategy rather than arising only as an unintended result. International law is becoming a plural legal ecology defined by overlapping regimes, conditional obligations, competing claims to legitimacy, and instrumental applications of legal rules.

Related Analysis on Venezuela and International Criminal Law

5.1. When International Criminal Law Is Not Invoked: Reflections on Maduro, Jurisdiction, and a Path Not Taken
January 13, 2026
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/01/13/when-international-criminal-law-is-not-invoked-reflections-on-maduro-jurisdiction-and-a-path-not-taken/

This related contribution evaluates the Maduro case through the framework of international criminal law. It examines the significance of the United States choosing to base its action exclusively on domestic narcotics and weapons charges rather than allegations of crimes against humanity, despite extensive international evidence documenting killings, torture, arbitrary detention, and forced displacement in Venezuela.

The post considers the limits of the Nikolić precedent and the Ker–Frisbie doctrine, the absence of a general U.S. federal statute criminalizing crimes against humanity, and the broader resistance of the United States to international criminal jurisdiction. It argues that the decision not to rely on international criminal law ensured that the operation would primarily be evaluated as a domestic prosecution accompanied by an unlawful use of force rather than, even arguably, as an exceptional exercise of international criminal-law enforcement.

The analysis does not contend that unilateral enforcement of international crimes would necessarily have been lawful or legitimate. Instead, it identifies the persistent divide between the normative ambitions of international criminal law and the enforcement mechanisms available to realize them. Continuing failures to ensure accountability leave victims without protection and encourage extralegal responses that further undermine the international legal order.

Related Research

The series and this contribution draw from and develop my broader scholarship concerning China, international economic law, legal pluralism, regional governance, international institutions, and the evolving relationship among geography, power, and law.

Books

China’s Influence on Non-Trade Concerns in International Economic Law
Routledge
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2876883

Peer-Reviewed and Law-Journal Articles

China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Its Impact on the Energy Independence of the European Union
Asian Journal of Law and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2025
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5215879

China’s Path to Modernization and Legal Pluralism: Transplants and the Belt and Road Initiative
Asian Journal of Law and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2025
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5215873

Trade and Progress: The Case of China
Columbia Journal of Asian Law
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3020365

The Influence of Confucianism in the Construction of the Chinese Juridical and Political System
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1288392

Five Years of China’s WTO Membership: EU and U.S. Perspectives on China’s Compliance with Transparency Commitments and the Transitional Review Mechanism
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916768

Additional Scholarship and Working Papers

Selected scholarship on China, international economic law, global governance, international institutions, and legal pluralism is available through my SSRN author page:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=629289

Connecting This Research to the Present Contribution

Collectively, these writings establish the conceptual basis for interpreting current uses of force as components of a wider transformation in the international legal order. The interventions involving Iran and Venezuela create immediate questions about sovereignty, self-defense, congressional authorization, presidential authority, leadership succession, and regime change. The Maduro case also demonstrates the connection between the law governing the use of force and international criminal law: which crimes are alleged, which jurisdictional routes are available, and how the selected legal framework influences the legitimacy and international assessment of an intervention.

The Monroe Doctrine, the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific strategy, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, great-power competition, and recent military actions should not therefore be regarded as unrelated developments. They represent interconnected expressions of a shift away from a presumptively universal legal system and toward legal spaces that are more regionalized and strategically differentiated.

International law has not ceased to exist. It is being challenged and reconstructed through geography, power, alliances, infrastructure, trade, strategic resources, and competing institutional arrangements. The continuing dependence of small and middle powers on multilateral rules may nevertheless remain an important source of legal resilience, even when the most powerful countries destabilize the system.

The complete overview of the earlier series is available here:
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/4-5-series-overview-monroe-doctrine-regional-power-and-the-legal-reconfiguration-of-global-order/

#SEALS2026 #InternationalLaw #ConstitutionalLaw #UseOfForce #NationalSecurityLaw #UnitedNations #Venezuela #Iran #China #IndoPacific #GlobalGovernance #Multipolarity #LegalEducation

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/the-use-of-force-in-a-reconfigured-global-legal-order-venezuela-iran-china-and-the-indo-pacific/

It was a pleasure to present “Academic Institutions as Epistemic Institutions: Constitutional Law, Federal Funding, and Institutional Neutralization” during the Constitutional Law Workshop, “The Administration’s Assault on Academic Institutions: Universities and Academic Freedom,” at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference.

My presentation developed one part of my broader paper, “Epistemic Governance,” by applying its analytical framework to current pressures affecting universities, academic freedom, federal research funding, and institutional autonomy. The presentation considered how formally neutral legal, administrative, and financial mechanisms can transform the circumstances in which knowledge is created, assessed, and institutionally recognized.

The complete working paper is available on SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=6487038

My contribution analyzes contemporary pressures on universities and academic freedom through the framework of “Epistemic Governance”, meaning the legal and institutional processes through which authority determines what qualifies as legitimate knowledge, who is permitted to produce it, and the material conditions under which it can be created and distributed.

Rather than focusing only on direct censorship or openly ideological intervention, I examine how seemingly neutral legal and administrative instruments, including conditional federal funding, budget restructuring, compliance obligations, accreditation pressures, changes to research priorities, and the centralization of university governance, can alter the conditions under which knowledge is produced, reviewed, communicated, and institutionally authorized. I describe this development as institutional neutralization: the weakening of institutions capable of producing independent expertise, criticism, or oversight through defunding, organizational restructuring, procedural marginalization, governance redesign, and the redistribution of decision-making power.

This framework also complicates the traditional distinction between public and private universities. Although their constitutional positions continue to differ, both operate within extensive networks of federal funding, accreditation, regulation, contractual duties, tax advantages, and administrative dependence. Government can therefore influence academic institutions not only through direct legal orders but also by modifying the financial, regulatory, and organizational foundations upon which research and teaching rely.

The constitutional and administrative-law component of my analysis follows the judiciary’s changing role in distributing epistemic authority among scientific communities, courts, administrative agencies, universities, Congress, and the Executive. The doctrinal discussion begins with evidence law. Under the general-acceptance standard established in Frye v. United States, courts relied substantially on the relevant scientific community to decide whether specialized knowledge had gained sufficient legitimacy to be admitted into legal proceedings. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals did not reject scientific expertise, but it transferred final authority over the legal admissibility of scientific knowledge to judges, thereby turning courts into epistemic gatekeepers.

The analysis then moves to administrative law. Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association v. State Farm, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC, and Massachusetts v. EPA present different approaches to balancing judicial review, statutory responsibilities, administrative expertise, political accountability, and decision-making amid scientific uncertainty. This accommodation has increasingly been replaced by stronger judicial control, particularly through the major-questions doctrine articulated in West Virginia v. EPA and the rejection of Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

The separation-of-powers analysis concludes with Trump v. Slaughter, in which the Supreme Court overruled Humphrey’s Executor and significantly increased presidential authority over independent regulatory agencies. This decision is particularly relevant to my argument because the constitutional position of agency independence also concerns the institutional conditions necessary for professional expertise to withstand immediate political control. The Supreme Court’s June 29, 2026 opinion supports this characterization.

Finally, I connect this doctrinal progression to recent litigation involving federal research funding and the continuing viability of particular areas of inquiry, including Association of American Universities v. National Science Foundation, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. National Institutes of Health, National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association, and American Association of Physicians for Human Rights v. National Institutes of Health. These cases bring together Administrative Procedure Act review, congressional appropriations authority, presidential administration, separation of powers, jurisdiction, remedial power, and Fifth Amendment equal-protection principles. They also reveal a deeper constitutional issue: whether government funding choices simply distribute limited resources or can effectively decide which forms of knowledge, scholarly communities, and academic disciplines remain institutionally capable of surviving. See, for example, the decisions regarding NSF funding, NIH indirect cost reimbursement, and NIH grant terminations.

Considered together, these developments demonstrate a significant transformation in the judicial role. Courts have progressed from deciding which forms of knowledge may be introduced into legal proceedings to reviewing how administrative agencies use scientific expertise and, ultimately, to determining the constitutional, institutional, and financial circumstances under which scientific and academic knowledge can be produced in the first place.

Without treating contemporary developments in the United States as equivalent to McCarthyism or historical authoritarian experiences in other countries, I draw upon comparative and historical examples to identify structural continuities in how political power can recalibrate epistemic institutions while maintaining the outward appearance of legality, administrative neutrality, and institutional independence. My central argument is that academic freedom cannot be protected exclusively as an individual right of expression. It must also be recognized as an institutional and infrastructural constitutional value that depends on the continued existence of institutions possessing sufficient professional autonomy, financial stability, and decision-making independence to produce knowledge capable of challenging governmental authority.

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/academic-institutions-as-epistemic-institutions-constitutional-law-federal-funding-and-institutional-neutralization-2026-southeastern-association-of-law-schools-seals-annual-conference/

One of the most valuable aspects of chairing discussion groups at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference is observing how scholars from different fields examine shared legal challenges through distinct methodological approaches.

Our discussion group, Corporate Power and Accountability in Global Value Chains: Human Rights, Sustainability, Labor, and Technology, assembled participants whose expertise included corporate law, business and human rights, securities regulation, antitrust, international law, environmental law, labor law, technology law, and comparative law. Throughout the afternoon, the conversation showed that corporate accountability can no longer be examined from the perspective of only one discipline. It instead demands engagement across legal fields, regulatory traditions, and jurisdictions.

I began the session by asking participants to consider whether the business and human rights movement has reached a new stage. After decades focused primarily on establishing international standards and soft-law instruments, the principal challenge may no longer involve creating norms. It may instead concern implementation, oversight, enforcement, and accountability throughout increasingly complicated global value chains.

That opening question led the conversation in several different directions.

Advancing from Human Rights Standards to Meaningful Implementation

A recurring subject was the widening divide between formal legal commitments and their implementation in practice. Participants considered whether current corporate due diligence requirements, sustainability reporting systems, and voluntary standards can genuinely improve conditions for workers and affected communities or whether stronger enforcement mechanisms are still required.

The central question was no longer whether corporations have a responsibility to respect human rights. Instead, the discussion increasingly examined how legal duties can be converted into meaningful practices across complex international production networks.

Diverging Regulatory Approaches in Europe and the United States

A second theme addressed the increasingly different regulatory paths developing across jurisdictions.

Several participants examined recent developments in the European Union, including mandatory corporate sustainability reporting and human rights due diligence legislation. These measures were contrasted with the more fragmented regulatory environment found in the United States.

The exchange raised broader comparative questions about regulatory convergence and fragmentation. Are jurisdictions gradually moving toward shared standards for corporate accountability, or are they constructing separate models shaped by different constitutional traditions, political objectives, and economic philosophies?

Technology as a Source of Opportunity and Risk

Technology appeared repeatedly during the discussion.

Participants examined how artificial intelligence, blockchain, satellite monitoring, digital traceability platforms, and automated data analysis might enhance transparency and oversight across global supply chains. At the same time, these technologies create significant concerns involving privacy, algorithmic bias, explainability, and the growing concentration of informational power among public and private actors.

Instead of treating technology solely as a solution or as a danger, the conversation emphasized that technological innovation must be integrated into broader legal and institutional accountability systems.

Extending Corporate Accountability Beyond Corporations

One particularly compelling part of the conversation addressed the increasing influence of actors beyond multinational corporations.

Participants considered the expanding roles of investors, financial institutions, auditors, ESG rating agencies, certification bodies, consultants, and other private intermediaries. These actors increasingly influence corporate conduct through market incentives rather than conventional governmental regulation.

This development raised broader questions about legitimacy, transparency, conflicts of interest, and accountability across the growing system of private governance.

Human Rights, Market Competition, and the Global Economy

The conversation also highlighted tensions that often receive limited attention in business and human rights scholarship.

Participants examined how antitrust policy, competition law, and market concentration can interact with attempts to strengthen labor standards and sustainability practices. They asked whether cooperation among competitors intended to improve working conditions should always be evaluated through the traditional framework of competition law or whether evolving sustainability priorities call for different legal approaches.

The group also discussed how compliance expenses are frequently shifted to smaller suppliers and producers in developing economies. This practice raises serious questions concerning fairness, capacity-building, and the distributional effects of global regulatory programs.

The Interdisciplinary Future of Corporate Accountability

Perhaps the clearest conclusion to emerge from the discussion was that corporate accountability is now an inherently interdisciplinary area.

Contemporary questions involving business and human rights intersect with securities regulation, environmental law, labor law, technology governance, antitrust, international economic law, comparative law, and global governance. Responding effectively to these challenges requires cooperation across legal disciplines and continuing dialogue among scholars who apply different methodological perspectives.

I am deeply thankful to every participant for contributing to such an insightful and engaging exchange. The session did not produce a single consensus. Instead, it demonstrated the depth and breadth of contemporary corporate accountability scholarship and reaffirmed the importance of continuing these conversations as legal frameworks evolve.

The conversation will continue.

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/30/corporate-accountability-in-a-fragmented-world-reflections-from-the-2026-southeastern-association-of-law-schools-seals-annual-conference/

Reflections on the SEALS 2026 Annual Conference

Today, I had the pleasure of contributing a presentation titled “The Future of Comparative Law in a Multipolar and Technological World” to the discussion group “Teaching and Researching in Civil and Comparative Law” at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference.

The complete long-form post is available at https://lnkd.in/d5MmxDjt.

The session provided a valuable occasion to consider both the future direction of comparative legal scholarship and the changing circumstances in which law is taught. Our conversation covered civil-law and common-law traditions, legal history, institutional and cultural contexts, student preparation, artificial intelligence, assessment practices, and the role of comparative methodology across the law-school curriculum.

One subject I was particularly interested in exploring was the future of comparative law within an increasingly multipolar legal order.

For many decades, comparative-law scholarship focused largely on comparisons among Western legal systems or on the movement of legal transplants from a relatively narrow group of jurisdictions. Today’s legal environment, however, is evolving quickly.

China, India, Brazil, and other emerging powers are increasingly establishing distinctive regulatory and legal models that influence and challenge existing international legal frameworks. Instead of viewing legal influence as moving mainly from West to East, comparative lawyers must now recognize a considerably more complex and multidirectional exchange of legal concepts, institutional practices, and regulatory strategies.

This transformation presents several important methodological questions:

• How should comparative lawyers recognize and assess legal innovation across different legal traditions?

• How should institutional legitimacy be evaluated when multiple governance models coexist, interact, and compete?

• How should comparative legal methodology address legal pluralism and the increasing variety of regulatory approaches within global governance?

• How can legal systems be compared without reducing them to separate rules, statutes, or judicial decisions removed from their political, historical, cultural, and institutional environments?

These questions are now fundamental not only to comparative law but also to international law, global governance, legal education, political economy, and law and technology. Addressing them requires scholars to reconsider assumptions that have long shaped comparative legal scholarship and acknowledge that comparison is more than a descriptive activity. It is also a method for assessing institutional decisions, regulatory compromises, allocations of authority, and competing visions of economic and social order.

These reflections expand upon research I published with Cambridge University Press in the Asian Journal of Law & Society:

China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Its Impact on the Energy Independence of the European Union (2025)

China’s Path to Modernization and Legal Pluralism: Transplants and the Belt and Road Initiative (2025)

Both articles consider how contemporary developments connected with China’s modernization and the Belt and Road Initiative inform wider debates concerning legal pluralism, comparative law, energy governance, legal transplantation, and the transformation of global governance.

At the same time, the conversation affirmed another principle that has become increasingly significant in my teaching: comparative law should not be limited to one specialized course.

Comparative analysis can be integrated across the curriculum, including courses on technology law, climate change law, energy law, secured transactions, international economic law, environmental law, corporate governance, and other doctrinal subjects. Students benefit from being asked not only what a legal rule says but also why a jurisdiction adopted one institutional structure instead of another, which interests that arrangement protects, and what costs or compromises result from it.

From this perspective, comparative law is more than the examination of foreign legal systems. It is a form of legal reasoning that enables students to question features of their own legal system that might otherwise seem natural, unavoidable, or universal.

Comparative Legal Education in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

A significant portion of our discussion also addressed the expanding role of artificial intelligence in legal education.

My approach does not begin with the assumption that AI can simply be removed from students’ work. Legal educators must instead redesign aspects of teaching and assessment to ensure that students remain accountable for developing, comprehending, and defending their analysis.

In several courses, I follow an interactive and iterative process. Students do not simply turn in a completed presentation or written assignment. They initially propose a subject related to the course material. I then ask them to narrow, clarify, or reframe the project. Next, they provide a more detailed structure, identify the legal issues they plan to examine, and explain the project’s relationship to the course. I respond once more before they advance to the final stage.

The benefit of this approach is that assessment does not rest entirely on the quality of the polished final submission. It also evaluates how students respond to questions, feedback, criticism, and evolving expectations as their work develops.

In courses including Technology Law and Climate Change Law, I have also assigned group presentations followed by questions from the professor and other students. This question-and-answer period is especially valuable. Students may rely on AI or other technological resources while preparing their presentations, but they must still explain their positions, defend their sources, address objections, and demonstrate an authentic understanding of the subject.

For individual projects, I have similarly required multiple consultation stages before the final submission. In a different teaching setting, where asynchronous participation made ongoing classroom engagement more challenging, I introduced a short oral examination tied to students’ group projects. In most instances, the students defended their analyses very successfully.

This experience confirmed an essential principle: the goal should not always be to establish whether students used AI, but to determine whether they have developed intellectual ownership of their completed work.

Even if AI contributes to brainstorming, organization, language refinement, or initial research, students must remain capable of verifying authorities, recognizing omissions, explaining their reasoning, and defending their conclusions. A document that appears professionally written does not necessarily demonstrate legal understanding.

Shifting from Final Products to Visible Intellectual Processes

Artificial intelligence therefore makes evaluating the legal-reasoning process increasingly important, rather than concentrating solely on a final examination or research paper.

In some courses, I have assigned less weight to conventional research papers and instead required shorter policy briefs connected to presentations, class discussions, and iterative project development. A one-page policy brief may reveal more about a student’s ability to define a problem, identify the most relevant information, develop a position, and present it clearly than a lengthy paper whose authorship and intellectual evolution are difficult to evaluate.

The primary difficulty is that this approach requires more consistent faculty involvement. Interactive assessment may include repeated rounds of feedback, consultations, presentations, oral questioning, and the evaluation of several stages of a project. It demands more time and effort than receiving one completed submission.

Even so, this method may offer a more reliable measure of student learning in an environment where highly polished writing can be generated almost immediately.

This process also makes the development of legal reasoning more visible. Students witness how a broad concept becomes a manageable research question, why a topic needs to be narrowed, how criticism changes an argument, and how legal analysis develops through revision instead of appearing fully complete only at the end.

The ultimate objective is for students to internalize this process so that, as practicing lawyers, they can independently ask:

• Is the proposed response complete?

• Are the cited sources authentic, authoritative, and relevant?

• Has a significant jurisdiction, doctrine, argument, or counterargument been overlooked?

• Does the conclusion genuinely follow from the supporting authorities?

• Does the analysis address the particular legal issue presented?

• Can I articulate and defend this work without depending on the technology used to help create it?

AI and the Broader Importance of Teaching Technology Law

I also stressed that growing institutional interest in courses dedicated specifically to artificial intelligence should be supported by a wider foundation in Technology Law.

Artificial intelligence represents only one part of the broader relationship connecting technology, law, institutions, markets, and society. Students should learn not only how AI systems function or how lawyers may employ them in professional practice, but also how technological development affects society more broadly.

A foundational Technology Law course can explore:

• the human and social consequences of technological systems;

• privacy, surveillance, cybersecurity, digital platforms, and data governance;

• algorithmic discrimination and the unequal allocation of technological risks;

• the relationship between innovation and corporate power;

• technological infrastructures and forms of dependence;

• technology’s influence on democratic institutions and professional responsibility;

• the distinction between technical efficiency and normative legitimacy; and

• technology’s capacity to create substantial benefits as well as serious harms.

Such a course can teach students to approach AI-generated material in much the same way that a supervising lawyer would review work prepared by a research assistant or junior associate. The work might be helpful, advanced, and efficient, but the lawyer retains responsibility for checking every source, assertion, citation, and analytical step.

The risk extends beyond invented cases and obvious “hallucinations.” AI may provide an answer that is technically correct yet incomplete, poorly contextualized, grounded in an inappropriate legal framework, or unrelated to the precise issue. Students may find such errors particularly hard to recognize because they have not yet developed the expertise needed to notice what is absent.

Legal education must consequently equip students with the substantive knowledge required to question and evaluate AI-generated material instead of accepting it without scrutiny.

Comparative Law as a Framework for Responding to Technological Change

Our conversation about artificial intelligence also showed why comparative legal education continues to be indispensable.

Artificial intelligence is not introduced into every legal system in an identical manner. Its implementation is influenced by differences in legal sources, regulatory bodies, judicial practices, professional traditions, legal education, and the respective functions of codes, judicial decisions, administrative institutions, and private actors.

The dangers connected with AI-supported legal research may therefore appear differently in common-law, civil-law, mixed, Indigenous, and plural legal orders. A system trained mainly on one legal tradition may repeat false assumptions about another. It might present case law as authoritative in a jurisdiction where judicial opinions perform a different function, interpret codified law through a common-law lens, or erase institutional and cultural distinctions by converting them into generalized legal statements.

Comparative legal methodology can reveal these hidden assumptions.

It encourages scholars and students to ask not merely whether an AI-generated legal proposition is accurate, but whether it is accurate within a particular legal system, institutional structure, hierarchy of authority, professional tradition, and historical setting.

The same comparative approach is necessary when examining how jurisdictions regulate artificial intelligence, assign responsibility, establish standards of professional competence, protect personal information, and balance innovation with social risk. The emerging regulation of AI has itself become an important field for comparative-law analysis.

Legal Education as an Exercise in Translation

More generally, teaching comparative law calls upon legal educators to serve as translators among legal traditions, academic disciplines, professional expectations, and different forms of knowledge.

Law students arrive with widely varied cultural and educational experiences. Some possess strong backgrounds in history but have limited exposure to science or technology. Others come from engineering, economics, business, public policy, or the natural sciences yet may have encountered comparatively little legal history or political theory.

Legal education should not assume that every student begins with the same intellectual foundation. At the same time, it should not abandon historical or contextual learning simply because students initially find those subjects unfamiliar.

Instead, educators should establish pathways that help students connect unfamiliar concepts with their existing knowledge while gradually building a more comprehensive intellectual framework. Comparative teaching is particularly effective in this regard because it exposes the historical contingency of legal institutions and shows that different societies may respond to similar challenges through different arrangements of law, authority, community, and individual rights.

Students need to understand more than the substance of legal rules. They must also appreciate why those rules are important, how they developed, which purposes they fulfill, and how comparative perspectives can be applied in legal practice.

Looking Ahead

The discussion reaffirmed that comparative law remains essential precisely because the legal, institutional, and technological dimensions of the world are becoming increasingly complex.

A more multipolar international system requires comparative lawyers to move beyond conventional West-to-East accounts of legal diffusion. Artificial intelligence requires legal educators to reassess how authorship, learning, expertise, and assessment are understood. The expanding diversity of student backgrounds calls for teaching methods that connect legal doctrine with institutions, history, culture, technology, and professional practice.

Together, these developments encourage a broader understanding of comparative law: not merely as an examination of national legal rules, but as the study of how societies develop knowledge, distribute power, choose institutions, manage technological change, and envision legitimate models of governance.

I am grateful to the organizers and my colleagues for an engaging and wide-ranging discussion, as well as for the opportunity to exchange perspectives on how comparative law and legal education can continue adapting to a world that is increasingly interconnected, multipolar, and shaped by technology.

Comparative law creates connections among legal systems, but it also enables us to examine the decisions, assumptions, and forms of knowledge through which those systems are built.

Related Bibliography and Series Context

Artificial Intelligence, Governance, and SDG 16 Series

8.1. Artificial Intelligence, Governance, and SDG 16: Why Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions Matter in the Age of AI (Series Launch)
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/01/8-1-artificial-intelligence-governance-and-sdg-16-why-peace-justice-and-strong-institutions-matter-in-the-age-of-ai-series-launch

8.2.1. AI Is Not Just a Technology—It Is a Governance Challenge
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/02/8-2-ai-is-not-just-a-technology-it-is-a-governance-challenge/

8.2.2. AI Governance Is Not Only an Ethical Question—It Is an Architectural One
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/8-2-2nd-part-ai-governance-is-not-only-an-ethical-question-it-is-an-architectural-one/

8.2.3. AI Governance at Execution Speed: Architecture, Legitimacy, and the Fragility of Law
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/8-2-3-third-part-ai-governance-at-execution-speed-architecture-legitimacy-and-the-fragility-of-law/

8.2.4. When Law Becomes Infrastructure: Authority, Sovereignty, and the Limits of Machine Enforcement
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/8-2-4-when-law-becomes-infrastructure-authority-sovereignty-and-the-limits-of-machine-enforcement/

8.2.5. Public Law at Execution Speed: AI Governance, Constitutionalism, and SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/8-2-5-public-law-at-execution-speed-ai-governance-constitutionalism-and-sdg-16/

8.3. Law Between Automation and Justice: Framing AI’s Role in Achieving SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/8-3-law-between-automation-and-justice-framing-ais-role-in-achieving-sdg-16/

8.4. AI, Corruption, and Control: When Anti-Corruption Tools Become Instruments of Power
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/8-4-ai-corruption-and-control-when-anti-corruption-tools-become-instruments-of-power/

8.5. Efficiency Is Not Justice: Ethics and Access to Justice in the Age of AI
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/8-5-efficiency-is-not-justice-ethics-and-access-to-justice-in-the-age-of-ai/

8.6. Open ≠ Accessible: AI, Open Data, and the Inclusion Challenge under SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/8-6-open-%e2%89%a0-accessible-ai-open-data-and-the-inclusion-challenge-under-sdg-16/

8.7. Security, Dignity, and Accountability: AI in Criminal Justice under SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/8-7-security-dignity-and-accountability-ai-in-criminal-justice-under-sdg-16/

8.8. Rethinking the Rule of Law for Sustainable Development in the Age of AI
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/08/8-8-rethinking-the-rule-of-law-for-sustainable-development-in-the-age-of-ai/

8.9. Governing AI Together: Collective Responsibility, Global Governance, and the Future of SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/8-9-governing-ai-together-collective-responsibility-global-governance-and-the-future-of-sdg-16/

8.10. Artificial Intelligence, Governance, and SDG 16: A Synthesis of the Series
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/03/22/artificial-intelligence-governance-and-sdg-16-a-synthesis-of-the-series/

The SEALS discussion reflected many of these same themes, including institutional capacity, AI governance, law functioning at “execution speed,” public and private authority, comparative models of regulation, and the challenge of preparing future lawyers for a legal profession increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence. As the conversation illustrated, the key question is no longer only whether AI can be regulated, but how legal institutions must change when AI increasingly transforms governance itself.

The series is associated with the volume Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Sustainable Development: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, published in the gLAWcal—Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development—Routledge Book Series on Transnational Law and Governance.

Related Research

Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Sustainable Development: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, Routledge (2026).

Framing AI’s Role in Achieving SDG 16 (Routledge, Transnational Law and Governance Series, 2026)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5399415

Rethinking the Rule of Law for Sustainable Development in the Age of AI (Routledge, Transnational Law and Governance Series, 2026).

Science, Technology, Policy and International Law, Routledge, 2024.

Science, Technology, Society and Law, in Science, Technology, Policy and International Law (Routledge, 2024)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590213

The Intersections Among Science, Technology, Policy and Law: In Between Truth and Justice (Routledge, 2024)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590214

The Interlinkages Science–Technology–Law: Information Society, Knowledge Economy and the Rule of Law (Routledge, 2024)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590217

Climate Justice in the Anthropocene and Its Relationship with Science and Technology: The Importance of Ethics of Responsibility, 55 Connecticut Law Review 819 (2023).

Public Administration in the Age of Globalization and Emerging Technologies, 88 UMKC Law Review 397 (2019)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3610427

Global Governance and Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Information Society, in Handbook of Global Science, Technology, and Innovation (Wiley, 2015).

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/29/the-future-of-comparative-law-in-a-multipolar-and-technological-world-2026-southeastern-association-of-law-schools-seals-annual-conference/

Reflections on the SEALS 2026 Annual Conference

Today, I had the pleasure of contributing a presentation titled “The Future of Comparative Law in a Multipolar and Technological World” to the discussion group “Teaching and Researching in Civil and Comparative Law” at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference.

The complete long-form post is available at https://lnkd.in/d5MmxDjt.

The session provided a valuable occasion to consider both the future direction of comparative legal scholarship and the changing circumstances in which law is taught. Our conversation covered civil-law and common-law traditions, legal history, institutional and cultural contexts, student preparation, artificial intelligence, assessment practices, and the role of comparative methodology across the law-school curriculum.

One subject I was particularly interested in exploring was the future of comparative law within an increasingly multipolar legal order.

For many decades, comparative-law scholarship focused largely on comparisons among Western legal systems or on the movement of legal transplants from a relatively narrow group of jurisdictions. Today’s legal environment, however, is evolving quickly.

China, India, Brazil, and other emerging powers are increasingly establishing distinctive regulatory and legal models that influence and challenge existing international legal frameworks. Instead of viewing legal influence as moving mainly from West to East, comparative lawyers must now recognize a considerably more complex and multidirectional exchange of legal concepts, institutional practices, and regulatory strategies.

This transformation presents several important methodological questions:

• How should comparative lawyers recognize and assess legal innovation across different legal traditions?

• How should institutional legitimacy be evaluated when multiple governance models coexist, interact, and compete?

• How should comparative legal methodology address legal pluralism and the increasing variety of regulatory approaches within global governance?

• How can legal systems be compared without reducing them to separate rules, statutes, or judicial decisions removed from their political, historical, cultural, and institutional environments?

These questions are now fundamental not only to comparative law but also to international law, global governance, legal education, political economy, and law and technology. Addressing them requires scholars to reconsider assumptions that have long shaped comparative legal scholarship and acknowledge that comparison is more than a descriptive activity. It is also a method for assessing institutional decisions, regulatory compromises, allocations of authority, and competing visions of economic and social order.

These reflections expand upon research I published with Cambridge University Press in the Asian Journal of Law & Society:

China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Its Impact on the Energy Independence of the European Union (2025)

China’s Path to Modernization and Legal Pluralism: Transplants and the Belt and Road Initiative (2025)

Both articles consider how contemporary developments connected with China’s modernization and the Belt and Road Initiative inform wider debates concerning legal pluralism, comparative law, energy governance, legal transplantation, and the transformation of global governance.

At the same time, the conversation affirmed another principle that has become increasingly significant in my teaching: comparative law should not be limited to one specialized course.

Comparative analysis can be integrated across the curriculum, including courses on technology law, climate change law, energy law, secured transactions, international economic law, environmental law, corporate governance, and other doctrinal subjects. Students benefit from being asked not only what a legal rule says but also why a jurisdiction adopted one institutional structure instead of another, which interests that arrangement protects, and what costs or compromises result from it.

From this perspective, comparative law is more than the examination of foreign legal systems. It is a form of legal reasoning that enables students to question features of their own legal system that might otherwise seem natural, unavoidable, or universal.

Comparative Legal Education in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

A significant portion of our discussion also addressed the expanding role of artificial intelligence in legal education.

My approach does not begin with the assumption that AI can simply be removed from students’ work. Legal educators must instead redesign aspects of teaching and assessment to ensure that students remain accountable for developing, comprehending, and defending their analysis.

In several courses, I follow an interactive and iterative process. Students do not simply turn in a completed presentation or written assignment. They initially propose a subject related to the course material. I then ask them to narrow, clarify, or reframe the project. Next, they provide a more detailed structure, identify the legal issues they plan to examine, and explain the project’s relationship to the course. I respond once more before they advance to the final stage.

The benefit of this approach is that assessment does not rest entirely on the quality of the polished final submission. It also evaluates how students respond to questions, feedback, criticism, and evolving expectations as their work develops.

In courses including Technology Law and Climate Change Law, I have also assigned group presentations followed by questions from the professor and other students. This question-and-answer period is especially valuable. Students may rely on AI or other technological resources while preparing their presentations, but they must still explain their positions, defend their sources, address objections, and demonstrate an authentic understanding of the subject.

For individual projects, I have similarly required multiple consultation stages before the final submission. In a different teaching setting, where asynchronous participation made ongoing classroom engagement more challenging, I introduced a short oral examination tied to students’ group projects. In most instances, the students defended their analyses very successfully.

This experience confirmed an essential principle: the goal should not always be to establish whether students used AI, but to determine whether they have developed intellectual ownership of their completed work.

Even if AI contributes to brainstorming, organization, language refinement, or initial research, students must remain capable of verifying authorities, recognizing omissions, explaining their reasoning, and defending their conclusions. A document that appears professionally written does not necessarily demonstrate legal understanding.

Shifting from Final Products to Visible Intellectual Processes

Artificial intelligence therefore makes evaluating the legal-reasoning process increasingly important, rather than concentrating solely on a final examination or research paper.

In some courses, I have assigned less weight to conventional research papers and instead required shorter policy briefs connected to presentations, class discussions, and iterative project development. A one-page policy brief may reveal more about a student’s ability to define a problem, identify the most relevant information, develop a position, and present it clearly than a lengthy paper whose authorship and intellectual evolution are difficult to evaluate.

The primary difficulty is that this approach requires more consistent faculty involvement. Interactive assessment may include repeated rounds of feedback, consultations, presentations, oral questioning, and the evaluation of several stages of a project. It demands more time and effort than receiving one completed submission.

Even so, this method may offer a more reliable measure of student learning in an environment where highly polished writing can be generated almost immediately.

This process also makes the development of legal reasoning more visible. Students witness how a broad concept becomes a manageable research question, why a topic needs to be narrowed, how criticism changes an argument, and how legal analysis develops through revision instead of appearing fully complete only at the end.

The ultimate objective is for students to internalize this process so that, as practicing lawyers, they can independently ask:

• Is the proposed response complete?

• Are the cited sources authentic, authoritative, and relevant?

• Has a significant jurisdiction, doctrine, argument, or counterargument been overlooked?

• Does the conclusion genuinely follow from the supporting authorities?

• Does the analysis address the particular legal issue presented?

• Can I articulate and defend this work without depending on the technology used to help create it?

AI and the Broader Importance of Teaching Technology Law

I also stressed that growing institutional interest in courses dedicated specifically to artificial intelligence should be supported by a wider foundation in Technology Law.

Artificial intelligence represents only one part of the broader relationship connecting technology, law, institutions, markets, and society. Students should learn not only how AI systems function or how lawyers may employ them in professional practice, but also how technological development affects society more broadly.

A foundational Technology Law course can explore:

• the human and social consequences of technological systems;

• privacy, surveillance, cybersecurity, digital platforms, and data governance;

• algorithmic discrimination and the unequal allocation of technological risks;

• the relationship between innovation and corporate power;

• technological infrastructures and forms of dependence;

• technology’s influence on democratic institutions and professional responsibility;

• the distinction between technical efficiency and normative legitimacy; and

• technology’s capacity to create substantial benefits as well as serious harms.

Such a course can teach students to approach AI-generated material in much the same way that a supervising lawyer would review work prepared by a research assistant or junior associate. The work might be helpful, advanced, and efficient, but the lawyer retains responsibility for checking every source, assertion, citation, and analytical step.

The risk extends beyond invented cases and obvious “hallucinations.” AI may provide an answer that is technically correct yet incomplete, poorly contextualized, grounded in an inappropriate legal framework, or unrelated to the precise issue. Students may find such errors particularly hard to recognize because they have not yet developed the expertise needed to notice what is absent.

Legal education must consequently equip students with the substantive knowledge required to question and evaluate AI-generated material instead of accepting it without scrutiny.

Comparative Law as a Framework for Responding to Technological Change

Our conversation about artificial intelligence also showed why comparative legal education continues to be indispensable.

Artificial intelligence is not introduced into every legal system in an identical manner. Its implementation is influenced by differences in legal sources, regulatory bodies, judicial practices, professional traditions, legal education, and the respective functions of codes, judicial decisions, administrative institutions, and private actors.

The dangers connected with AI-supported legal research may therefore appear differently in common-law, civil-law, mixed, Indigenous, and plural legal orders. A system trained mainly on one legal tradition may repeat false assumptions about another. It might present case law as authoritative in a jurisdiction where judicial opinions perform a different function, interpret codified law through a common-law lens, or erase institutional and cultural distinctions by converting them into generalized legal statements.

Comparative legal methodology can reveal these hidden assumptions.

It encourages scholars and students to ask not merely whether an AI-generated legal proposition is accurate, but whether it is accurate within a particular legal system, institutional structure, hierarchy of authority, professional tradition, and historical setting.

The same comparative approach is necessary when examining how jurisdictions regulate artificial intelligence, assign responsibility, establish standards of professional competence, protect personal information, and balance innovation with social risk. The emerging regulation of AI has itself become an important field for comparative-law analysis.

Legal Education as an Exercise in Translation

More generally, teaching comparative law calls upon legal educators to serve as translators among legal traditions, academic disciplines, professional expectations, and different forms of knowledge.

Law students arrive with widely varied cultural and educational experiences. Some possess strong backgrounds in history but have limited exposure to science or technology. Others come from engineering, economics, business, public policy, or the natural sciences yet may have encountered comparatively little legal history or political theory.

Legal education should not assume that every student begins with the same intellectual foundation. At the same time, it should not abandon historical or contextual learning simply because students initially find those subjects unfamiliar.

Instead, educators should establish pathways that help students connect unfamiliar concepts with their existing knowledge while gradually building a more comprehensive intellectual framework. Comparative teaching is particularly effective in this regard because it exposes the historical contingency of legal institutions and shows that different societies may respond to similar challenges through different arrangements of law, authority, community, and individual rights.

Students need to understand more than the substance of legal rules. They must also appreciate why those rules are important, how they developed, which purposes they fulfill, and how comparative perspectives can be applied in legal practice.

Looking Ahead

The discussion reaffirmed that comparative law remains essential precisely because the legal, institutional, and technological dimensions of the world are becoming increasingly complex.

A more multipolar international system requires comparative lawyers to move beyond conventional West-to-East accounts of legal diffusion. Artificial intelligence requires legal educators to reassess how authorship, learning, expertise, and assessment are understood. The expanding diversity of student backgrounds calls for teaching methods that connect legal doctrine with institutions, history, culture, technology, and professional practice.

Together, these developments encourage a broader understanding of comparative law: not merely as an examination of national legal rules, but as the study of how societies develop knowledge, distribute power, choose institutions, manage technological change, and envision legitimate models of governance.

I am grateful to the organizers and my colleagues for an engaging and wide-ranging discussion, as well as for the opportunity to exchange perspectives on how comparative law and legal education can continue adapting to a world that is increasingly interconnected, multipolar, and shaped by technology.

Comparative law creates connections among legal systems, but it also enables us to examine the decisions, assumptions, and forms of knowledge through which those systems are built.

Related Bibliography and Series Context

Artificial Intelligence, Governance, and SDG 16 Series

8.1. Artificial Intelligence, Governance, and SDG 16: Why Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions Matter in the Age of AI (Series Launch)
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/01/8-1-artificial-intelligence-governance-and-sdg-16-why-peace-justice-and-strong-institutions-matter-in-the-age-of-ai-series-launch

8.2.1. AI Is Not Just a Technology—It Is a Governance Challenge
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/02/8-2-ai-is-not-just-a-technology-it-is-a-governance-challenge/

8.2.2. AI Governance Is Not Only an Ethical Question—It Is an Architectural One
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/8-2-2nd-part-ai-governance-is-not-only-an-ethical-question-it-is-an-architectural-one/

8.2.3. AI Governance at Execution Speed: Architecture, Legitimacy, and the Fragility of Law
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/8-2-3-third-part-ai-governance-at-execution-speed-architecture-legitimacy-and-the-fragility-of-law/

8.2.4. When Law Becomes Infrastructure: Authority, Sovereignty, and the Limits of Machine Enforcement
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/8-2-4-when-law-becomes-infrastructure-authority-sovereignty-and-the-limits-of-machine-enforcement/

8.2.5. Public Law at Execution Speed: AI Governance, Constitutionalism, and SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/8-2-5-public-law-at-execution-speed-ai-governance-constitutionalism-and-sdg-16/

8.3. Law Between Automation and Justice: Framing AI’s Role in Achieving SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/8-3-law-between-automation-and-justice-framing-ais-role-in-achieving-sdg-16/

8.4. AI, Corruption, and Control: When Anti-Corruption Tools Become Instruments of Power
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/8-4-ai-corruption-and-control-when-anti-corruption-tools-become-instruments-of-power/

8.5. Efficiency Is Not Justice: Ethics and Access to Justice in the Age of AI
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/8-5-efficiency-is-not-justice-ethics-and-access-to-justice-in-the-age-of-ai/

8.6. Open ≠ Accessible: AI, Open Data, and the Inclusion Challenge under SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/8-6-open-%e2%89%a0-accessible-ai-open-data-and-the-inclusion-challenge-under-sdg-16/

8.7. Security, Dignity, and Accountability: AI in Criminal Justice under SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/8-7-security-dignity-and-accountability-ai-in-criminal-justice-under-sdg-16/

8.8. Rethinking the Rule of Law for Sustainable Development in the Age of AI
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/08/8-8-rethinking-the-rule-of-law-for-sustainable-development-in-the-age-of-ai/

8.9. Governing AI Together: Collective Responsibility, Global Governance, and the Future of SDG 16
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/8-9-governing-ai-together-collective-responsibility-global-governance-and-the-future-of-sdg-16/

8.10. Artificial Intelligence, Governance, and SDG 16: A Synthesis of the Series
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/03/22/artificial-intelligence-governance-and-sdg-16-a-synthesis-of-the-series/

The SEALS discussion reflected many of these same themes, including institutional capacity, AI governance, law functioning at “execution speed,” public and private authority, comparative models of regulation, and the challenge of preparing future lawyers for a legal profession increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence. As the conversation illustrated, the key question is no longer only whether AI can be regulated, but how legal institutions must change when AI increasingly transforms governance itself.

The series is associated with the volume Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Sustainable Development: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, published in the gLAWcal—Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development—Routledge Book Series on Transnational Law and Governance.

Related Research

Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Sustainable Development: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, Routledge (2026).

Framing AI’s Role in Achieving SDG 16 (Routledge, Transnational Law and Governance Series, 2026)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5399415

Rethinking the Rule of Law for Sustainable Development in the Age of AI (Routledge, Transnational Law and Governance Series, 2026).

Science, Technology, Policy and International Law, Routledge, 2024.

Science, Technology, Society and Law, in Science, Technology, Policy and International Law (Routledge, 2024)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590213

The Intersections Among Science, Technology, Policy and Law: In Between Truth and Justice (Routledge, 2024)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590214

The Interlinkages Science–Technology–Law: Information Society, Knowledge Economy and the Rule of Law (Routledge, 2024)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4590217

Climate Justice in the Anthropocene and Its Relationship with Science and Technology: The Importance of Ethics of Responsibility, 55 Connecticut Law Review 819 (2023).

Public Administration in the Age of Globalization and Emerging Technologies, 88 UMKC Law Review 397 (2019)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3610427

Global Governance and Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Information Society, in Handbook of Global Science, Technology, and Innovation (Wiley, 2015).

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/29/the-future-of-comparative-law-in-a-multipolar-and-technological-world-2026-southeastern-association-of-law-schools-seals-annual-conference/

Paolo Farah described that A stable society depends on laws that people can understand, institutions they can trust, and principles that protect fairness. Modern jurisprudence provides the framework for these goals. It brings together legal rules, court decisions, constitutional values, and methods of interpretation. These elements help legal systems maintain order while responding to social change.

The rule of law remains one of the strongest foundations of modern justice. It requires governments and individuals to act within established legal boundaries. Public officials cannot simply exercise authority according to personal preference. Their decisions must follow legal standards. This principle supports accountability and helps protect people from arbitrary treatment.

Constitutional law also shapes the structure of justice. Constitutions commonly define government powers and establish important rights. They can set limits on lawmakers and public institutions while giving courts standards for reviewing government actions. These protections help create a balance between effective government and individual liberty.

Fairness in legal proceedings is another cornerstone. People involved in legal disputes should have the opportunity to understand claims, present evidence, and respond to opposing arguments. Courts must consider cases impartially. These safeguards increase confidence that legal outcomes result from established procedures rather than personal influence.

Modern jurisprudence also values consistency. Previous court decisions can guide judges when similar legal questions arise. This approach creates greater predictability for individuals and organizations. People can make better decisions when they have a reasonable understanding of how courts may apply existing laws.

At the same time, legal systems cannot remain unchanged. New technology, business practices, environmental concerns, and social developments regularly create unfamiliar legal questions. Courts and lawmakers must address these issues while preserving fundamental principles.

The strength of modern jurisprudence comes from this balance between stability and adaptation. Legal foundations provide dependable standards, yet they also allow law to respond to changing circumstances. By protecting rights, limiting authority, encouraging fair procedures, and promoting consistent decisions, these principles support a justice system capable of serving society both today and in the future.

I look forward to contributing this afternoon to the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference.

I am pleased to participate in the Distance Education Workshop – Focus on the Students, scheduled for today, Monday, July 27, from 3:30–6:00 p.m. My contribution will address “Beyond the Virtual Classroom: Student Engagement and Community in Distance Legal Education.”

As legal education continues to change, this workshop offers a valuable opportunity to consider a fundamental question for law schools and universities: how can we ensure that technology strengthens, rather than weakens, the student learning experience?

I look forward to joining the conversation about student engagement, professional identity, community development, experiential learning, accessibility, and the benefits and challenges of synchronous and asynchronous education.

My contribution will be informed by many years of experience teaching both face-to-face and remotely in law, public policy, public administration, and interdisciplinary programs. At West Virginia University, alongside my in-person courses, I taught numerous fully online synchronous graduate courses, including Public Financial Management, Public Service Leadership, Public and Non-Profit Budgeting, the MPA Capstone Seminar, Democratic Context of Public Administration, Public Administration and Policy Development, and Energy and Environmental Policy.

At the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, my online teaching experience also encompassed intersession courses in International Trade Law, International Environmental Law, Law of China, and Global Environmental Law. During and following the COVID-19 pandemic, my broader teaching work has included online and international courses in Climate Change Law, Energy Law, Technology Law, Business and Commercial Law, Legislation and Regulation, International and Comparative Cultural Heritage Law, and International and European Energy Law at the University of Tulsa College of Law. This work has also involved teaching connected to international programs in China, Europe, and the Middle East.

My perspective is further shaped by more than twenty years of developing and directing international educational programs, including the China Summer Law Institute. That program gradually incorporated online and hybrid elements to connect students, faculty members, and institutions across different jurisdictions.

These experiences have strengthened my conviction that effective distance education involves far more than moving lectures onto an online platform. It demands the deliberate design of participation, mentoring, peer engagement, collaborative projects, personalized feedback, and opportunities for students to connect legal and policy analysis with professional practice.

I am especially interested in discussing ways to keep students from becoming invisible in online learning environments, particularly those managing employment, family obligations, different time zones, linguistic differences, or other responsibilities. Distance education should offer several meaningful avenues for participation. Technology should be used not simply to duplicate the traditional classroom but to develop new possibilities for interdisciplinary, international, and cross-institutional learning.

I am thankful to the organizers and fellow participants for convening this timely discussion, and I look forward to a productive exchange of experiences and perspectives.

#SEALS2026 #LegalEducation #DistanceEducation #OnlineLearning #HigherEducation #StudentEngagement #TeachingInnovation #InternationalLaw #EnvironmentalLaw #PublicAdministration #PublicPolicy #GlobalLegalEducation

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/27/2026-southeastern-association-of-law-schools-seals-annual-conference-beyond-the-virtual-classroom-student-engagement-and-community-in-distance-legal-education/

The 2026 Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) offers an outstanding occasion for scholars from different legal disciplines to come together for sustained, interdisciplinary dialogue about some of the most consequential challenges confronting law and legal institutions today. I am deeply grateful to everyone participating in these discussion groups as organizers, discussants, and contributors. I look forward to the thoughtful exchanges that have made the SEALS discussion-group format such an important setting for intellectual engagement.

Although every discussion group concentrates on a different legal area, they share a central question: how can legal institutions respond to accelerating technological, environmental, economic, and geopolitical change while safeguarding the rule of law, democratic accountability, human rights, and sustainable development? Collectively, these conversations consider the changing connections among law, governance, markets, and society. They draw upon perspectives from public and private law, international and comparative law, business law, environmental law, technology law, and legal education.

This year’s discussion groups focus on four interconnected themes: digital transformation and the regulation of emerging technologies; corporate responsibility and sustainability throughout global value chains; the legal dimensions of changing food and agricultural systems; and innovative methods of preparing lawyers for the climate and energy transition. Each session has an independent focus, but together they demonstrate the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of modern legal scholarship and the importance of conversations that cross traditional doctrinal boundaries.

The schedule, titles, and descriptions of the discussion groups appear below. I hope these sessions will encourage stimulating exchanges, lead to new collaborations, and advance continuing debates about how law can respond to the complex challenges of the present era.

Discussion Group 1
Governing Digital Transformation: Regulatory Competition, Institutional Capacity, and the Future of Rights
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

Discussion Group 2
Corporate Power and Accountability in Global Value Chains: Human Rights, Sustainability, Labor, and Technology
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
3:30–6:30 p.m.

Discussion Group 3
Reimagining Food and Agriculture Governance: Farmers, Animals, Trade, Technology, and Climate Resilience
Friday, July 31, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

Discussion Group 4
Preparing Lawyers for the Climate and Energy Transition: Experiential Pedagogy, Professional Skills, and Institutional Innovation
Saturday, August 1, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

DISCUSSION GROUP 1

Governing Digital Transformation: Regulatory Competition, Institutional Capacity, and the Future of Rights

Wednesday, July 29, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

Artificial intelligence, automated decision-making systems, data-driven business models, cybersecurity risks, digital platforms, and blockchain technologies are changing substantive law as well as the institutions charged with developing and enforcing it.

This discussion group considers how domestic, regional, and international legal systems are addressing digital transformation. It will examine whether different regulatory strategies are encouraging convergence, deepening fragmentation, or creating new forms of regulatory competition. Special consideration will be given to institutional capacity, cross-border enforcement, standard-setting by public and private actors, and the involvement of jurisdictions beyond the traditional centers of technology regulation.

Participants will further examine how emerging technologies are transforming intellectual property, corporate governance, competition, employment, administrative decision-making, commercial transactions, and individual rights. The conversation will consider how legal systems can encourage socially valuable innovation while protecting accountability, transparency, security, and effective human oversight.

Possible Discussion Questions

1. What recent legal or institutional development has had the greatest significance for emerging-technology governance?

2. Are the leading regulatory approaches to artificial intelligence and digital technologies gradually converging, or are they becoming more fragmented?

3. Which institutions, including legislatures, administrative agencies, courts, international organizations, technical bodies, and private companies, are best equipped to regulate technologies that develop rapidly?

4. How should legal systems respond to automated decisions that cannot easily be explained, challenged, or connected to an identifiable human decision-maker?

5. Can regulation designed to encourage innovation sufficiently protect privacy, equality, intellectual property, cybersecurity, and other public interests, or are more precautionary measures required?

6. In what ways are artificial intelligence and data-based technologies altering corporate governance, professional responsibility, business transactions, and the assignment of legal liability?

7. Which perspectives from the Global South and emerging economies remain absent or underrepresented in leading discussions about technology governance?

8. Should international law promote interoperable minimum standards, mutual recognition between national regulatory systems, or a more comprehensive framework of global regulation?

DISCUSSION GROUP 2

Corporate Power and Accountability in Global Value Chains: Human Rights, Sustainability, Labor, and Technology

Wednesday, July 29, 2026
3:30–6:30 p.m.

The regulation of multinational companies is entering a time of considerable political and institutional uncertainty. This discussion group explores how national, regional, international, and transnational legal frameworks are redefining corporate responsibility throughout global value chains.

Looking beyond the introduction of reporting and due-diligence obligations, the group will examine implementation, enforcement, remedies, corporate governance, labor conditions, and the allocation of compliance expenses among lead companies, subsidiaries, suppliers, workers, and affected communities.

Participants will discuss the development of sustainability due-diligence regimes, the historical legacy and continuing importance of the Alien Tort Statute, the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, ESG reporting, materiality standards, rating agencies, greenwashing, and technology-supported monitoring of supply chains.

The discussion will consider whether existing approaches create genuine corporate accountability or mainly introduce additional procedural requirements without providing effective remedies.

Possible Discussion Questions

1. Has the modern business and human rights discussion progressed from establishing norms to achieving meaningful implementation, or does a serious enforcement gap continue to exist?

2. Which types of corporate due diligence are most likely to create better conditions for workers, communities, and rights holders instead of simply producing more reports?

3. How should legal responsibility be distributed among parent companies, subsidiaries, contractors, suppliers, investors, financial institutions, and digital platforms?

4. Which remedies should be available when corporate conduct causes environmental, labor, or human rights damage spanning several jurisdictions?

5. How can legal systems stop corporations from shifting the financial costs and risks of compliance to smaller suppliers, workers, and producers in developing countries?

6. What functions should materiality assessments, ESG ratings, auditors, certification organizations, and sustainability consultants perform, and what mechanisms should hold these actors accountable?

7. Can artificial intelligence, blockchain, satellite monitoring, and related technologies enhance supply-chain transparency, or could they introduce additional forms of exclusion and surveillance?

8. Do the existing divisions among voluntary standards, mandatory due diligence, disclosure obligations, and civil liability remain useful, or should they be replaced by a more integrated regulatory approach?

9. How should corporate sustainability law address political opposition, regulatory rollback, and conflicting ideas about the proper purpose of corporations?

DISCUSSION GROUP 3

Reimagining Food and Agriculture Governance: Farmers, Animals, Trade, Technology, and Climate Resilience

Friday, July 31, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

Climate change, biodiversity decline, technological development, geopolitical instability, and increasing concern about the concentration and distribution of power across global food chains are transforming food and agricultural systems.

This discussion group considers how law can guide the agricultural transition while safeguarding farmers, agricultural workers, animals, consumers, Indigenous peoples, and vulnerable communities. Participants will investigate the connections among farmers’ rights, animal welfare, international trade, food sovereignty, food security, intellectual property, agricultural technology, land use, and environmental sustainability.

Specific attention will focus on how artificial intelligence, biotechnology, digital farming, data control, and corporate concentration affect rural communities and small-scale agricultural producers.

The group will consider whether current domestic and international institutions can successfully balance productivity and technological innovation with ecological resilience, distributive justice, cultural diversity, and democratic authority over food systems.

Possible Discussion Questions

1. What should agricultural law and policy prioritize: productivity, food security, food sovereignty, ecological sustainability, rural development, or a combination of these objectives?

2. How can legal frameworks protect small-scale farmers and agricultural laborers during the shift toward production methods that are more technologically advanced and resilient to climate change?

3. Are existing international trade rules consistent with food sovereignty, animal welfare, biodiversity conservation, and domestic policies that support sustainable agriculture?

4. How should the law govern the ownership and control of agricultural data, seeds, genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and artificial intelligence systems used in farming?

5. Do developments such as precision agriculture, biotechnology, alternative proteins, and automated farming make agricultural production more accessible, or do they further strengthen corporate concentration?

6. How should animal welfare and animal rights be integrated into laws and policies governing agriculture, the environment, trade, and food safety?

7. What forms of legal acknowledgment and protection should apply to Indigenous knowledge, traditional farming methods, and community-based food systems?

8. How should the expenses associated with climate adaptation and ecological transformation be shared among governments, agribusinesses, consumers, farmers, and international institutions?

9. Which institutional changes are needed to improve coordination among food, trade, climate, biodiversity, health, and development policies?

DISCUSSION GROUP 4

Preparing Lawyers for the Climate and Energy Transition: Experiential Pedagogy, Professional Skills, and Institutional Innovation

Saturday, August 1, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

The transition involving climate and energy is reshaping the knowledge, professional abilities, and ethical judgment required of lawyers.

This discussion group explores how courses in environmental, energy, climate, and sustainability law can extend beyond traditional doctrinal teaching without compromising analytical rigor. Participants will discuss simulations, clinics, fieldwork, community partnerships, policy laboratories, transactional assignments, and interdisciplinary projects. They will also consider collaboration with governments, companies, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, and communities directly affected by environmental and energy policies.

The group will further examine how the NextGen Bar Exam, artificial intelligence, online and hybrid instruction, and evolving patterns of legal practice should shape course development and assessment methods.

Special attention will be directed toward cooperation among doctrinal, clinical, legal-writing, and skills faculty. The session will also consider how experiential education can serve communities without treating them solely as educational resources. Participants will be encouraged to present practical exercises, evaluation methods, and models that other institutions can adapt.

Possible Discussion Questions

1. Which professional competencies should students develop in environmental, energy, climate, and sustainability law courses that conventional doctrinal instruction does not adequately provide?

2. Which experiential approaches, including clinics, simulations, negotiations, drafting assignments, fieldwork, community engagement, and policy laboratories, have been most successful?

3. How can faculty introduce experiential elements into large doctrinal classes without reducing substantive coverage or creating workloads that are difficult to manage?

4. In what ways should the NextGen Bar Exam affect the instruction and assessment of environmental, administrative, energy, and regulatory law?

5. Which forms of cooperation among doctrinal, clinical, legal-writing, and interdisciplinary faculty can be sustained realistically?

6. How can faculty collaborate ethically with communities, government bodies, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations without reducing external partners to classroom teaching resources?

7. What role should artificial intelligence have in legal research, regulatory evaluation, drafting, simulations, and the assessment of students?

8. How should faculty assess collaborative assignments when students assume different responsibilities and produce different types of work?

9. Which experiential activities can function effectively in online, hybrid, or internationally diverse learning environments?

10. What institutional resources, financial support, or curricular changes are required to establish experiential education as a lasting element of environmental and sustainability law programs?

Paolo Farah, Paolo Davide Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/seals2026-law-governance-and-institutional-change-in-a-transforming-world/

I am pleased to return to Amelia Island for the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) 2026 Annual Meeting. Every year, SEALS offers a unique setting for engaging with colleagues from throughout the United States and other parts of the world through discussion groups, workshops, works-in-progress sessions, and informal exchanges that often inspire new academic and institutional partnerships.

This year, I am particularly glad to take part in the conference in several different roles. Alongside my service as a member of the SEALS Global Outreach Committee, I will participate in multiple workshops and scholarly sessions during the week. I will also have the honor of organizing and moderating four interdisciplinary discussion groups. These sessions will unite scholars representing diverse areas of law to consider urgent issues involving governance, technology, sustainability, corporate accountability, food systems, climate and energy policy, and legal education.

Discussion Groups, I Am Organizing and Moderating

As part of my ongoing dedication to encouraging interdisciplinary exchange at SEALS, I am delighted to organize and moderate the following four discussion groups. Each session is structured to promote meaningful, sustained dialogue rather than a series of formal presentations, allowing participants to share insights, explore developing arguments, and discover possibilities for future collaboration.

Wednesday, July 29 | 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Governing Digital Transformation: Regulatory Competition, Institutional Capacity, and the Future of Rights

Wednesday, July 29 | 3:30–6:30 p.m.
Corporate Power and Accountability in Global Value Chains: Human Rights, Sustainability, Labor, and Technology

Friday, July 31 | 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Reimagining Food and Agriculture Governance: Farmers, Animals, Trade, Technology, and Climate Resilience

Saturday, August 1 | 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Preparing Lawyers for the Climate and Energy Transition: Experiential Pedagogy, Professional Skills, and Institutional Innovation

While each discussion group addresses a separate topic, all four sessions share a wider interest in how effectively legal institutions can respond to technological, environmental, economic, and geopolitical developments. Collectively, they consider the connections between public and private governance, institutional capacity, accountability, innovation, the protection of rights, sustainability, and professional education.

Additional SEALS 2026 Activities

I am also eager to contribute to the following workshops and scholarly sessions:

Monday, July 27 | 3:30–6:00 p.m.
Distance Education Workshop – Focus on the Students

Tuesday, July 28 | 3:00–5:30 p.m.
Teaching and Researching in Civil and Comparative Law

Thursday, July 30 | 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Constitutional Law Workshop – Constitution and Assault on Institutions: Universities and Academic Freedom

Friday, July 31 | 1:00–2:45 p.m.
Works-in-Progress Series – Administrative Law

I am sincerely thankful to every scholar who has accepted the invitation to participate as an organizer, discussant, or contributor. Their knowledge, generosity, and commitment to open, interdisciplinary engagement make the SEALS discussion-group format an especially meaningful venue for sharing ideas and cultivating new scholarly partnerships.

More information about the four discussion groups, including session descriptions, participating scholars, and potential discussion questions, will be published tomorrow and made available here:

https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/seals2026-law-governance-and-institutional-change-in-a-transforming-world/

Last year’s conference offered an exceptional setting for examining current challenges related to law, governance, sustainability, technology, and legal education.

https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2025/09/16/final-reflections-and-summary-of-my-2025-seals-contributions/

I look forward to reconnecting with friends and colleagues, continuing established conversations, and expanding those exchanges with returning colleagues and new participants during another engaging week at SEALS 2026.

See you on Amelia Island!

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/25/seals-2026-looking-forward-to-another-week-of-conversations-collaboration-and-new-ideas/

I am pleased to announce the official opening of the Rome Summer Law Institute, an ambitious new international academic initiative scheduled to take place in Rome, Italy, from May 16 to June 11, 2027. The program will be hosted at the University of Washington Rome Center and the Italian Institute of German Studies.

This initiative begins a new chapter grounded in almost two decades of international educational experience. The Rome program builds upon the extraordinary achievements of the Summer Law Institute in Beijing, which was held for fifteen editions between 2005 and 2019 before being suspended primarily because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout those years, the Institute brought together students, scholars, professionals, government officials, and institutional partners from around the world.

Advancing a Strong Academic Legacy

The Beijing Summer Law Institute developed into an internationally respected forum for interdisciplinary legal education, comparative research, professional networking, mentorship, internships, institutional collaboration, and cultural exchange. Over time, it established a dynamic global alum community and formed partnerships with universities, public bodies, international organizations, and legal practitioners.

The Rome Summer Law Institute carries this legacy forward while introducing a renewed identity and mission.

The new program will continue examining the central legal and policy issues influencing an increasingly interconnected and multipolar world.

A Global and Interdisciplinary Program

The Institute combines comparative perspectives across the following areas:

• climate change and the energy transition;

• environmental governance;

• food systems and sustainable development;

• artificial intelligence and emerging technologies;

• intellectual property and innovation;

• digital governance and cybersecurity;

• international trade and investment;

• geopolitics and global governance;

• supply chains and economic security;

• China, Europe, the United States, and the Indo-Pacific;

• law and global challenges in the twenty-first century.

Participants may attend one, two, three, or all four weeks, providing a flexible format for students, professionals, academics, and policymakers.

The learning experience will reach beyond conventional classroom instruction through executive workshops, visits to institutions, policy dialogues, networking opportunities, international conferences, and cultural activities.

Building an International Community

The Rome Summer Law Institute invites applications from:

• law students;

• graduate students;

• PhD candidates;

• lawyers;

• judges;

• diplomats;

• government officials;

• NGO representatives;

• corporate counsel;

• researchers;

• young professionals.

Because of its interdisciplinary approach, the Institute is also especially relevant to participants working or studying in political science, economics, international relations, public policy, business, environmental studies, technology, and related disciplines.

An Invitation to Academic and Institutional Partners

Expressions of Interest from Scholars, Professors, and Academic Partners may be submitted here.

One of our primary goals is to establish a genuinely global academic network.

For this reason, we are actively pursuing collaboration with:

• law schools;

• political science departments;

• economics and business schools;

• schools of public policy;

• international relations programs;

• language and area studies programs;

• universities and research institutes;

• international organizations;

• government agencies.

We enthusiastically welcome partnerships with institutions throughout the United States, Europe, China, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and other regions of the world.

Partner institutions may send student groups, nominate faculty members, coordinate joint educational programs, create collaborative research projects, and develop lasting partnerships with the Rome Summer Law Institute.

Individual candidates are also strongly encouraged to apply directly. Student applications may already be submitted here.

Expressions of Interest from Scholars, Professors, and Academic Partners may be submitted here.

Applications Are Now Open

Although a dedicated website for the Rome Summer Law Institute will be introduced soon, applications are now open so that interested participants and prospective institutional partners can begin preparing for the 2027 program.

Applications may be submitted through this link.

📅 Program dates: May 16 – June 11, 2027

📍 Location: University of Washington Rome Center, Rome, Italy, and Italian Institute of German Studies

The program brochure is currently available, and further announcements concerning faculty members, institutional partnerships, guest speakers, and special events will be shared in the coming months.

This is just the beginning.

I greatly look forward to welcoming an exceptional international community to Rome and working together to establish a new global platform dedicated to legal education, interdisciplinary exchange, and international cooperation.

I look forward to welcoming an international community of scholars, students, practitioners, and policymakers to Rome in 2027.

For information about applications or institutional partnerships, please get in touch with us at the following email address:

info@summerlawinstitute.com

Professor Paolo Davide Farah
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East Fourth Place
Tulsa, OK 74104

https://paolofarah.com/

https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=629289

Chair, International Law Association (ILA) Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance
Chair, American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order
Chair, European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on the International Rule of Law

#RomeSummerLawInstitute #StudyAbroad #InternationalLaw #ComparativeLaw #LegalEducation #GlobalGovernance #ArtificialIntelligence #ClimateLaw #EnergyLaw #IntellectualProperty #TradeLaw #FoodSystems #Sustainability #RuleOfLaw #HigherEducation #ExecutiveEducation #UniversityPartnerships #StudyInItaly #Rome #gLAWcal

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/25/launching-the-rome-summer-law-institute-2027-law-and-global-challenges-in-a-changing-world/

Paolo Davide Farah • Professor | Founder | Director

I am deeply honored to have my scholarship referenced in the United States National Report prepared for the 2026 Quadrennial General Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law. I am also very pleased to share this recognition with Professor Grace Carson. Congratulations, Grace!

For readers who would like to learn more, I recently published a short blog post that offers further background on the National Report and the Congress. I am happy to share it below:

https://lnkd.in/d63eyxym

My sincere thanks to The University of Tulsa College of Law for recognizing and sharing this achievement.

The University of Tulsa College of Law

Congratulations to Professors Paolo Davide Farah and Grace Carson. Their scholarship was cited in the United States National Report prepared for the 2026 Quadrennial General Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Berlin. The Congress will address the theme “Reflecting the Decolonial Turn in Comparative Law.” 👏

Professor Carson’s article, “Decolonization and Abolition: Why Tribes Should Reconsider Punishment (2022),” and Professor Farah’s article, “Conflicts between Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights: A Case Study on Intangible Cultural Heritage (2015),” were both acknowledged in this international report on comparative law.

For the full original post and additional details, please visit: The University of Tulsa College of Law Highlights Scholarship Recognized in the U.S. National Report for the 2026 IACL Congress

It was a pleasure to present “From Evidentiary Gatekeeping to Constitutional Control: Courts, Agencies, and the Governance of Knowledge” during the Administrative Law Works-in-Progress Workshop at the 2026 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference.

The workshop provides a particularly valuable format for scholarly exchange. My presentation examined the administrative-law component of my broader article, “Epistemic Governance.”

The complete paper, “Epistemic Governance,” is available on SSRN:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6487038

The project begins with the premise that law does more than settle disputes involving knowledge after they emerge. It also organizes the institutions, procedures, authority, and resources through which knowledge is created and recognized as authoritative. From this perspective, law performs two connected but separate functions. It serves as an arbiter by determining which evidence is admissible, which methodologies are sufficiently reliable, and whose testimony should be recognized. At the same time, it operates as a co-producer of epistemic authority by creating institutions, distributing competence, funding research, strengthening or weakening institutional independence, and organizing decisions under conditions of uncertainty.

I structured the presentation around four central questions:

1. Validity: Who determines what qualifies as legally valid knowledge?

2. Interpretation: Who resolves statutory ambiguity when technical or scientific evidence is involved?

3. Independence: Which expert institutions receive protection from direct political control?

4. Survival: Which scientific fields and professional communities retain the resources required to continue producing knowledge?

Together, these questions show how legal conflicts concerning knowledge have gradually moved upstream.

The earlier evidentiary approaches associated with Frye and Daubert focused on whether scientific knowledge that had already been produced could be introduced into legal proceedings. Frye tied admissibility to general acceptance within the relevant scientific community. By contrast, Daubert assigned judges the final responsibility for determining reliability under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. Both frameworks depend on expertise, but they distribute ultimate authority for validating that expertise in different ways.

Administrative law expanded this inquiry beyond the admissibility of evidence. Decisions including State Farm, Chevron, and Massachusetts v. EPA established competing approaches to the relationship among administrative agencies, courts, statutory interpretation, and scientific uncertainty. More recently, West Virginia v. EPA and Loper Bright have strengthened judicial authority over matters previously connected with administrative expertise and delegated decision-making power.

The institutional component has become increasingly significant. The removal doctrine, including Trump v. Slaughter, raises important questions about the relationship between presidential control and the independence of expert institutions. Authority over personnel can affect which evidence is gathered, which forms of expertise receive recognition, and how technical knowledge is converted into regulatory policy.

At the same time, disputes involving federal research funding, including litigation concerning NSF and NIH funding, indirect-cost limitations, grant terminations, and restrictions targeting particular research fields, demonstrate that funding choices are not simply matters of budget administration. Such decisions help construct the institutional framework within which knowledge can be produced. These disputes bring together administrative law, congressional appropriations power, executive authority, constitutional equality, jurisdiction, and remedies.

The transformation is therefore both temporal and institutional. Conventional evidentiary doctrine primarily operates ex post, asking whether existing expert knowledge may be admitted in a courtroom or another legal proceeding. Administrative, constitutional, and funding law increasingly function ex ante by determining whether particular forms of expertise will be produced, supported, financed, and institutionally recognized in the first place.

This development also clarifies what I call institutional neutralization. Institutional autonomy may be weakened without expressly prohibiting an idea or field of inquiry. Funding conditions, compliance duties, accreditation systems, governance restructuring, executive supervision, and procedural marginalization may appear formally neutral while raising costs, changing research priorities, excluding specific fields or communities, and reducing professional independence.

Comparative analysis can reveal these recurring mechanisms, but it must be undertaken with care. The presence of shared techniques, including defunding, restructuring, control over credentials, executive supervision, or the procedural normalization of political decisions, does not make separate political and legal systems equivalent. Those systems may differ substantially in scale, coercion, contestability, institutional resilience, and access to judicial and political remedies.

The normative issue is not whether expertise should remain entirely free from democratic supervision. The central question is how epistemic authority should be distributed so that scientific independence and democratic accountability can coexist. A legal framework informed by Science and Technology Studies should protect peer review, research priorities, and professional standards while also requiring transparent and reasoned decision-making, judicial review, legislative oversight, and meaningful public participation.

The presentation therefore concluded with a question extending far beyond any individual doctrine of administrative law:

Who controls the conditions under which knowledge is produced?

I am particularly grateful to Professor Ericka Kelsaw of Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law for moderating the workshop. I also thank my fellow participants, Elissa Gentry of Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law; Nicholas Georgakopoulos and Margaret Tarkington of Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law; Akira Mizobuchi of Kagawa University Faculty of Law; and Rodger Citron of Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, for their close engagement, constructive criticism, and thoughtful recommendations.

The full paper, “Epistemic Governance,” is available on SSRN:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6487038

Paolo Farah, Paolo Davide Farah

Originally published at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/08/05/from-evidentiary-gatekeeping-to-constitutional-control-courts-agencies-and-the-governance-of-knowledge-at-seals-2026/

We are pleased to announce that more than 100 participants from around the world have already registered for the inaugural event in the European Society of International Law Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series.

Taxation, Racial Capitalism, and the International Rule of Law: From Colonial Slavery to Global Governance

📅 Wednesday, July 22, 2026
🕛 12:00–1:30 p.m. Eastern Time
💻 Online

This strong level of interest highlights the importance of establishing lasting spaces for critical discussion about the connections among taxation, racial capitalism, colonial histories, modern structures of global governance, and the international rule of law.

The webinar will feature:

Anthony Infanti
University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Steven Dean
Boston University School of Law

Carliss Chatman
Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law

The discussion will be chaired and moderated by Paolo Davide Farah of The University of Tulsa College of Law.

We are grateful to everyone who has registered, as well as to the institutions, colleagues, and professional networks that have helped support the launch of this new webinar series.

Registration remains open. We encourage colleagues, students, researchers, scholars, and practitioners interested in taxation, international law, racial justice, colonialism, and global governance to participate in the conversation.

https://lnkd.in/dMhpmbda

The webinar is organized by the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law, with support and co-sponsorship from the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order and the International Law Association Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance.

Earlier posts in the series

This announcement continues a series of earlier posts that introduced the webinar and examined the broader intellectual framework informing the event.

The first post, “Launching the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series,” presented the aims of the new series and included the full description of its inaugural webinar.

A second post, “From Taxation to Epistemic Governance: Knowledge, Power, and the Reconfiguration of Global Order,” placed the webinar within a wider examination of how legal and institutional systems decide whose knowledge is considered authoritative, how power and resources are distributed, and how competing ideas of justice and global order become legitimized.

In a third post published four days before the webinar, entitled “Four Days to Go: Taxation, Racial Capitalism, and the International Rule of Law,” I shared an updated announcement drawing attention to the expanding institutional support for the inaugural event of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series. In addition to being organized within the framework of the European Society of International Law, the webinar is co-sponsored by the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) and the ILA Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance. Registration remains free and open to everyone.

The fourth post, Anthony Infanti on The Human Toll and the Upcoming ESIL Webinar, develops that announcement by highlighting Anthony Infanti’s invitation to join the discussion and his reflections on the broader questions of governance, power, legal ordering, institutional design, and knowledge raised by the two books.

The fifth post examines Steven Dean’s invocation of Juneteenth and the continuing tension between formal legal emancipation and meaningful equality.

The sixth post, “Over 100 Participants Registered for the Inaugural ESIL Rule of Law Webinar,” announces that the event has attracted more than 100 registered participants from around the world. This response demonstrates the significant interest in the questions of taxation, racial capitalism, colonialism, historical injustice, international law, and global governance at the center of the webinar.

Proposed Framing of the Conversation

Questions surrounding taxation, racial capitalism, slavery, colonialism, and historical injustice offer an important starting point for exploring broader issues of governance, power, legal ordering, institutional design, and the production of knowledge.

Taxation is often described as a technical field concerned mainly with revenue collection, tax bases, administrative efficiency, and the distribution of taxing authority. The two books in dialogue challenge this narrow understanding. They invite us to view taxation as legal and institutional infrastructure through which societies classify people and property, organize markets and political authority, distribute resources and vulnerability, and determine which claims, experiences, and forms of knowledge receive recognition.

The conversation will therefore engage directly with both books while placing them within broader debates involving international law, global governance, legal history, racial capitalism, fiscal sovereignty, corporate power, historical memory, reparations, institutional legitimacy, and the rule of law.

A central goal will be to examine how fiscal arrangements that are formally lawful and presented as neutral can reproduce lasting inequalities. The discussion will also consider what forms of historical acknowledgment, redistribution, institutional redesign, and reparative justice may be necessary in response.

Anthony C. Infanti, The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America

Professor Infanti’s book challenges the treatment of tax law as a neutral or separate field removed from the racialized legal structure of colonial society. It shows how colonial taxation operated alongside property law, slave codes, systems of punishment, migration policy, and public finance to sustain and reinforce slavery.

Among the mechanisms examined in the book are the classification of enslaved people as taxable property, the use of import taxes and fiscal incentives to influence racial populations and strengthen White control, and the use of public revenue to compensate slaveholders when enslaved people were executed or killed under color of law.

The book’s archival method is also central to its contribution. Tax records often preserved the names and claims of slaveholders while erasing or anonymizing the enslaved people whose lives and deaths gave rise to those claims. By reading fiscal documents alongside legislative histories, petitions, newspapers, pardons, and other sources, the book reconstructs individual lives and acts of resistance while revealing the politics that shape legal memory.

Steven A. Dean, Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow

Professor Dean’s book challenges the conventional account of international tax law as the gradual and largely technical development of rules intended to prevent double taxation. It traces the consolidation of the modern international tax system during decolonization and examines the shift of institutional authority away from the United Nations and toward the OECD.

Through the framework of Global Jim Crow, the book considers how rules favoring residence taxation over source taxation, the structure of double-tax treaties, institutional exclusion, corporate interests, and the influence of expert communities restricted the fiscal sovereignty of newly independent states. These arrangements also redirected resources away from education, healthcare, development, and other public priorities.

The book also connects representation to distribution. It asks whether formal participation in international institutions can be sufficient when agenda-setting authority, technical expertise, negotiating power, and the substantive rules governing the allocation of taxing rights remain unequal.

Because some readers may not have encountered the earlier posts, the principal bibliography is reproduced below.

Selected Bibliography

Books in Dialogue

Dean, Steven A. (2025). Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow. Oxford: Oxford University Press – Examines how international tax law has historically contributed to racialized systems of economic power and inequality throughout the global order.

Infanti, Anthony C. (2025). The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America. New York: New York University Press – Explores the relationship among taxation, slavery, and state-building in colonial America, emphasizing the human costs embedded within fiscal and legal institutions.

Related Scholarship by Steven A. Dean

Racialized International Tax Law in Research Handbook on Critical Tax Studies (forthcoming Edinburgh University Press, Yvette Lind and Dominic de Cogan, eds.)

Fear of a Black Planet: Africa’s Decolonisation and the Transformation of the International Tax Regime in Taxing People: The Next 100 Years (Cambridge University Press 2026, Tsilly Dagan and Ruth Mason, eds.)

Filing While Black: The Casual Racism of the Tax Law, 2022 Utah Law Review 801, available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4081456

Inclusive International Tax Policymaking: FATCA, the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, and the OECD Blacklist, Revue Européenne et Internationale de Droit Fiscal (2021) (Reprinted in Tax Notes International)

Ten Truths about Tax Havens: Inclusion and the ‘Liberia’ Problem, 70 Emory Law Journal 1657 (2021) (with Attiya Waris), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3822421

Dean’s SSRN Author Page: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=440250

Related Scholarship by Anthony Infanti

Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves (The MIT Press 2018).

Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, Anthony C. Infanti & Bridget J. Crawford eds., 2009). The Introduction is available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1333799

Internation Equity and Human Development, in Tax, Law and Development (Edward Elgar Publishing, Miranda Stewart & Yariv Brauner eds., 2013).

Tax Equity, 55 Buff. L. Rev. 1191 (2008), available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol55/iss4/5/

Tax and Time: On the Use and Misuse of Legal Imagination (NYU Press 2022), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4006652

Tax Reform Discourse, 32 Va. Tax Rev. 205 (2012), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2034869

Critical Tax Theory: Insights from the US and Opportunities for All, 51 Austl. Tax Rev. 81 (2022) (with Bridget J. Crawford), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4236410

Infanti’s SSRN Author Page

Related Scholarship by Carliss N. Chatman

(2023). “Teaching Slavery in Commercial Law.” 28 Michigan Journal of Race & Law 1–38. SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 611. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3926671 – Examines how slavery and its continuing legacies can be more meaningfully incorporated into the teaching and understanding of commercial law.

(2026). “The Contract and the Cure: Building a Private Infrastructure for Reparations.” In Slavery’s Long Tentacles: Entanglements in Historical and Modern Forms of Slavery (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). https://ssrn.com/abstract=6140369 – Explores how private law, contracts, and institutional design may help advance reparative justice for the enduring harms of slavery.

(October 24, 2024). “1981”, 82 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1655 (2026), SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 666, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4998718 – Analyzes the continuing importance of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and its role in addressing racial discrimination, equality, and access to economic opportunity.

(2018). “The Corporate Personhood Two-Step.” 18 Nevada Law Journal 811–862. Posted July 17, 2017; revised August 11, 2023. Chatman, Carliss, The Corporate Personhood Two-Step (June 25, 2017). 18 Nev. L. J. 811 (2018), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2992275 – Investigates how legal doctrines of corporate personhood influence corporate authority, accountability, and the distribution of rights within modern governance systems.

Chatman’s SSRN Author Page https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2419097

Related Scholarship by Paolo D. Farah

(2026). Epistemic Governance. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6487038 – Develops a framework for understanding how knowledge, expertise, authority, and competing narratives shape governance structures, institutional legitimacy, and global ordering.

(2025) China’s Path to Modernization and Legal Pluralism: Transplants and the Belt and Road Initiative, Asian Journal of Law and Society, Cambridge University Press https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5215873 – Examines how competing legal traditions, governance models, and development approaches contribute to evolving forms of legal pluralism and the reconfiguration of global order.

(2024). “Energy Justice, Just Transition and International Environmental Law.” In ASIL Proceedings (Just Energy Transition: Legal Challenges Associated with Coal Phase Out), Cambridge University Press. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5055884 – Explores how legal and governance frameworks influence the distribution of benefits and burdens during energy transitions, emphasizing historical responsibility, distributive justice, institutional legitimacy, and the role of law in addressing structural inequalities associated with climate and energy transformation.

Farah’s SSRN Author Page https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=629289

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Original article here: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/21/over-100-participants-registered-for-the-inaugural-esil-rule-of-law-webinar/

The European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on EU and International Rule of Law is pleased to announce its upcoming webinar as part of the ongoing Webinar Series:

Wednesday, August 12, 2026
10:00–11:30 a.m. Central Time
11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Online

Participation is free and open to everyone, but prior registration is required.

Scan the QR Code to Register

Click Here to Register for the Webinar

About the Webinar

The ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series was created, chaired, and moderated by Professor Paolo Davide Farah, Chair of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law.

This webinar will bring together discussions on three significant recent books that explore the changing connections between intellectual property, international economic law, public health, development, and global governance:

• Shujie Feng, Chinese Trademark Law from the Perspective of International Treaties (Springer Nature, 2026);

• Shujie Feng, Le Droit Chinois des Marques au Regard des Traités Internationaux (Éditions Pedone, 2024); and

• Srividhya Ragavan and Swaraj Paul Barooah, Fractures in IP, Trade, and Health: Centering a Public Health Framework (Oxford University Press, 2025).

While these publications examine different aspects of intellectual property law, they share a broader interest in understanding how international legal principles are developed, interpreted, applied, adjusted, and challenged across different legal systems and traditions.

Professor Shujie Feng’s English- and French-language books analyze the evolution of Chinese trademark law through the framework of international treaty commitments. His work explores how China has incorporated and adapted international intellectual property standards while addressing its own domestic legal, economic, institutional, and social considerations.

At the same time, Professor Srividhya Ragavan and Swaraj Paul Barooah examine the deeper tensions between intellectual property, international trade, development, and public health. Their scholarship proposes a governance approach that gives greater importance to public health within international economic regulation and discussions involving access to medicines, innovation, inclusion, and global justice.

Together, these books provide a valuable opportunity to examine intellectual property law not simply as a specialized legal discipline, but as an essential element of modern global governance. They raise broader issues involving treaty implementation, legal pluralism, harmonization, sovereignty, regulatory independence, access to justice, institutional legitimacy, accountability, and the role of law in balancing competing priorities such as innovation, economic development, public welfare, access to medicines, protection of traditional and Indigenous knowledge, and technological change.

Participants

Professor Shujie Feng

Tsinghua University School of Law

Professor Shujie Feng will present his recent English- and French-language monographs addressing Chinese trademark law, international treaty commitments, domestic legal implementation, and the relationship between international standards and the evolution of Chinese legal systems.

Professor Srividhya Ragavan

Texas A&M University School of Law

Professor Srividhya Ragavan will discuss the connections between intellectual property, international trade, public health, development, access to medicines, innovation, and institutional transformation.

Swaraj Paul Barooah

SpicyIP

Swaraj Paul Barooah will provide insights into intellectual property regulation, public health, access, inclusion, knowledge governance, and the broader social and developmental impacts of international intellectual property frameworks.

Discussant: Director Edward Kwakwa

Assistant Director General, Global Challenges and Partnerships Sector
World Intellectual Property Organization

Drawing upon his extensive experience with the World Intellectual Property Organization, Edward Kwakwa will address the institutional and policy issues emerging from the featured books, including treaty implementation, international collaboration, development, public health, emerging technologies, global partnerships, and the changing structure of international intellectual property governance.

Chair, Moderator, and Discussant: Professor Paolo Davide Farah

The University of Tulsa College of Law

Professor Paolo Davide Farah will lead and moderate the discussion while also participating as a substantive discussant.

Based on his research and publications concerning Chinese law, Chinese intellectual property law, intellectual property and development, Indigenous peoples, international economic law, emerging technologies, and global governance, Professor Farah will engage with the arguments presented in the three books. His contribution will focus on the relationship between international intellectual property frameworks and domestic legal development; China’s implementation of international treaty obligations; the role of China, India, and other emerging powers in shaping international economic governance; and the broader effects of intellectual property systems on development, public health, access to medicines, technological change, Indigenous knowledge, regulatory legitimacy, and the international rule of law.

The conversation will therefore combine the perspectives of the authors with the complementary academic and institutional viewpoints of Professor Farah and Edward Kwakwa.

Questions and Themes

The webinar will examine how intellectual property regimes have become increasingly important spaces where central issues related to the international rule of law are developed, debated, and transformed.

The discussion will give particular attention to the following themes:

• intellectual property and the international rule of law;

• international treaties and their implementation within domestic legal systems;

• Chinese intellectual property law from a comparative perspective;

• harmonization, sovereignty, regional integration, and legal pluralism;

• intellectual property, trade, development, and public health governance;

• access to medicines, innovation, and global justice;

• Indigenous peoples, traditional knowledge, cultural heritage, and intellectual property;

• technology governance, artificial intelligence, and intellectual property;

• emerging powers and the changing landscape of global governance;

• regulatory legitimacy and accountability in international economic law;

• knowledge governance and sustainable development; and

• the future of international economic governance in a multipolar world.

The webinar will also explore the connections between international commitments and domestic implementation, the relationship between global legal standards and national regulatory priorities, and the governance challenges created by digitalization, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies.

Special focus will be placed on the increasing role of China, India, and other emerging actors in shaping the future structure of international intellectual property and economic governance.

The discussion will further consider how intellectual property law influences Indigenous communities, traditional knowledge, access to information, development objectives, public welfare, technological innovation, and the balance of authority between international organizations and domestic legal institutions.

By connecting perspectives from international law, Chinese and comparative law, intellectual property law, trade law, public health, development, Indigenous knowledge governance, technology regulation, and institutional practice, the webinar aims to encourage interdisciplinary discussion on how effectively the international rule of law can address the challenges of an increasingly connected, multipolar, and rapidly evolving global environment.

Organization and Co-Sponsorship

This event is organized within the framework of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series, which was established and is chaired by Professor Paolo Davide Farah, Chair of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law. Professor Farah will serve as chair, moderator, and discussant during the webinar.

The webinar is co-sponsored by:

• the American Branch of the International Law Association Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order; and

• the International Law Association Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance.

Event Information

Date: Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Time: 10:00–11:30 a.m. Central Time / 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Format: Online webinar

Participation: Free and open to all

Registration: Required

Please share this announcement with colleagues, students, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and others interested in international law, Chinese and comparative law, intellectual property, public health, trade, development, Indigenous peoples, technology governance, emerging powers, and the future of global governance.

Selected Bibliography

Books in Dialogue

Shujie Feng, Chinese Trademark Law from the Perspective of International Treaties (Springer Nature, 2026);

Shujie Feng, Le Droit Chinois des Marques au Regard des Traités Internationaux (Éditions Pédone, 2024); and

Srividhya Ragavan and Swaraj Paul Barooah, Fractures in IP, Trade, and Health: Centering a Public Health Framework (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Related Scholarship by Shujie Feng

1. Shujie FENG, The Copyrightability of AI-Generated Content: A Doctrinal Exploration of the Pioneering Chinese Judicial Practice, Computer Law & Security Review, Vol. 59, 2025.

2. Shujie FENG, Geographical Indications: Can China Reconcile the Irreconcilable Intellectual Property Issue Between E.U. and U.S.? World Trade Review, May 2019. 13.

3. Shujie FENG, La mise en œuvre du droit de l’OMC en matière de propriété intellectuelle en Chine — Étude sur le droit chinois des brevets avec une perspective française-européenne (en français), Éditions A. Pédone, 2019.

4. ILA 2023 Paris Conference White Paper on Intellectual Property.

Related Scholarship by Srividhya Ragavan

Selected Bibliography

Books

1. Intellectual Property Law and Access to Medicine: TRIPS Agreement, Health, and Pharmaceuticals, Amaka Vanni ed., Routledge Press, 2021. Chapter of particular relevance: “World Trade Organization: A Barrier to Global Public Health?”

2. Book DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003176602

3. “To Sow or Not to Sow: Dilemmas from Creating New Food Rights,” in Agricultural Biotechnology and Intellectual Property: Seeds of Change, Jay P. Kesan ed., CABI Publishers, 2007.

Law Review Articles

1. “New Paradigms for Protection of Biodiversity.”

2. “The Dispute Settlement Process of the WTO: A Normative Structure to Achieve Utilitarian Objectives.”

3. “Make America Healthy: Reducing High Pharmaceutical Prices Without Reducing Innovation,” 77 SMU Law Review 787 (2024).

4. “The Dispute Settlement Process of the WTO: A Normative Structure to Achieve Utilitarian Objectives,” with Brian Manning, 79 UMKC Law Review 1 (2010).

5. “Correlative Obligation in Patent Law: The Role of Public Good in Defining the Limits of Patent Exclusivity,” 6 NYU Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law 6 (2016).

Related Scholarship by Paolo Davide Farah

Selected Bibliography

Books

• Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Sustainable Development: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, co-edited with Imad Antoine Ibrahim and Jon Truby, Routledge, 2026.

• Science, Technology, Policy and International Law, co-edited with Justo Corti Varela, Routledge, 2024.

• China’s Influence on Non-Trade Concerns in International Economic Law: Trade, Investment and Beyond, co-edited with Elena Cima, Routledge, 2016.

• Globalization, Environmental Law, and Sustainable Development in the Global South: Challenges for Implementation, co-edited with Kirk W. Junker, Routledge, 2021.

Book Chapters and Related Contributions

• “Framing AI’s Role in Achieving SDG 16,” with Imad Antoine Ibrahim and Jon Truby, in Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Sustainable Development: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, Routledge, 2026.

• “The Intersections Among Science, Technology, Policy and Law: In Between Truth and Justice,” with Justo Corti Varela, in Science, Technology, Policy and International Law, Routledge, 2024.

• “Water-Energy-Food Nexus in International Law: A Legal Analysis,” with Imad Antoine Ibrahim, in Handbook on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022, pp. 381–397.

For the original announcement and complete details, please visit the official article: Read the original article here

Warm congratulations to Dr. Ebrahim Alshaiban on successfully defending his S.J.D. dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law!

I was pleased to serve on Ebrahim’s dissertation committee together with Professor Elena Baylis, Professor Charles T. Kotuby Jr., and Professor Grant B. McIntyre.

Continuing my service on Ebrahim’s dissertation committee following my departure from the University of Pittsburgh was particularly meaningful. One of academia’s lasting strengths is that scholarly mentorship and collaboration are not limited by institutional affiliations. Even when academics move from one university to another, their common dedication to guiding students and contributing to knowledge remains active within the broader global academic community.

Ebrahim’s dissertation, “Energy Transition in Saudi Arabia: A Comparative Study of Renewable Energy Legal Frameworks Between Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the European Union,” addresses a significant and highly relevant subject at the crossroads of energy law, comparative law, climate governance, and sustainable development. Through an examination of international, U.S., European, and Saudi legal frameworks, the dissertation considers how comparative legal research may contribute to the creation and improvement of renewable energy regulations in Saudi Arabia.

The dissertation defense led to a stimulating conversation about comparative legal methodology, regulatory structures, the energy transition, and the responsibility of legal institutions in advancing sustainable development. It was gratifying to take part in this thoughtful scholarly dialogue and to witness the completion of Ebrahim’s doctoral research.

Once again, congratulations to Dr. Alshaiban on reaching this important milestone. I wish him continued success as he begins the next phase of his academic and professional journey.

#EnergyLaw #ClimateChange #RenewableEnergy #ComparativeLaw #InternationalLaw #SustainableDevelopment #SaudiArabia #EnergyTransition #SJD #UniversityOfPittsburgh

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Juneteenth, observed on June 19, 1865, commemorates the moment when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had already declared them legally free. Steven Dean’s reflections offer a meaningful point of departure for considering how law, taxation, and institutional systems have influenced slavery, racial inequality, and the long-term distribution of economic and political power.

I am very pleased to be chairing and moderating the webinar, “Taxation, Racial Capitalism, and the International Rule of Law: From Colonial Slavery to Global Governance,” which is being held as part of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to Steven Dean for connecting our upcoming webinar with the historical importance and enduring legacy of Juneteenth.

The discussion will bring together Steven Dean and Anthony Infanti to examine their respective books, Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow and The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America. Carliss Chatman will join the conversation as discussant.

Together, we will explore how fiscal and legal institutions have helped shape slavery, racial capitalism, exclusion, and global inequality. At the same time, the conversation will address broader issues surrounding emancipation, historical memory, reparations, institutional legitimacy, governance, and the extent to which legal systems can respond to the very structures they have historically reinforced.

I am equally pleased that this event is co-sponsored by the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) together with the ILA Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance.

The webinar will be held on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Attendance is free, and everyone is welcome to participate.

Registration

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSenhxQcN6nndaMpfluOGg0YZCyhriqNIrzdFqfgrISpInOkHQ/viewform?usp=dialog

Steven Dean on Juneteenth and the Forthcoming Conversation

In a previous post, Steven Dean placed the upcoming webinar in the broader historical context of Juneteenth:

On Friday, the United States celebrated Juneteenth.

Juneteenth, observed on June 19, marks the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned that they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

I hope you will take a moment to celebrate Juneteenth, belatedly, and therefore perhaps appropriately, by registering for this webinar organized by Paolo Davide Farah and the European Society of International Law. It will feature Anthony Infanti, Carliss Chatman, and me.

Steven’s invitation underscores a central theme of the upcoming discussion: legal declarations alone do not automatically bring about genuine freedom, equality, or institutional change. The distance between formal legal recognition and lived experience lies at the heart of both the history remembered through Juneteenth and the broader conversation about taxation, racial capitalism, and the rule of law.

Earlier Posts in the Series

This article continues a sequence of posts introducing both the webinar and the wider intellectual themes that frame the discussion.

The first contribution, “Launching the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series,” presented the goals of the new webinar series while outlining the inaugural event in full.

The second article, “From Taxation to Epistemic Governance: Knowledge, Power, and the Reconfiguration of Global Order,” expanded the discussion by examining how legal and institutional structures influence whose knowledge is recognized as authoritative, how resources and power are distributed, and how different understandings of justice and global governance gain legitimacy.

The third contribution, published four days before the webinar under the title “Four Days to Go: Taxation, Racial Capitalism, and the International Rule of Law,” provided an updated announcement emphasizing the growing institutional support for the inaugural webinar in the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series. Alongside its organization within the European Society of International Law, the event is also co-sponsored by the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) and the ILA Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance. Registration remains free and open to all partici pants.

The fourth article, “Anthony Infanti on The Human Toll and the Upcoming ESIL Webinar,” expanded upon that announcement by highlighting Anthony Infanti’s invitation to participate and his reflections on the wider questions of governance, power, legal ordering, institutional design, and knowledge raised through the two featured books.

This fifth contribution focuses on Steven Dean’s reflections on Juneteenth and the continuing tension between formal legal emancipation and the achievement of substantive equality.

Proposed Framing of the Conversation

Questions surrounding taxation, racial capitalism, slavery, colonialism, and historical injustice offer a valuable point of entry for examining larger issues involving governance, power, legal ordering, institutional design, and the creation and authority of knowledge.

Taxation is frequently viewed as a technical discipline concerned mainly with raising revenue, defining tax bases, improving administrative efficiency, and allocating taxing jurisdiction. The two books featured in this discussion challenge that narrow perspective. Instead, they encourage us to understand taxation as a form of legal and institutional infrastructure through which societies categorize people and property, organize markets and political authority, distribute both resources and vulnerability, and determine whose experiences, claims, and knowledge receive legal recognition.

Accordingly, the discussion will engage directly with both books while placing them within broader debates on international law, global governance, legal history, racial capitalism, fiscal sovereignty, corporate power, historical memory, reparations, institutional legitimacy, and the rule of law.

One of the principal goals of the conversation is to examine how legal fiscal arrangements that appear neutral on their face can nevertheless reproduce long-standing inequalities, while also considering what forms of historical acknowledgment, redistribution, institutional reform, and reparative justice may be necessary in response.

Anthony C. Infanti, The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America

Professor Anthony Infanti’s work challenges the idea that tax law developed as a neutral or isolated area of law separate from the racialized legal framework of colonial America. Instead, the book demonstrates that taxation functioned alongside property law, slave codes, criminal punishment, migration policies, and systems of public finance to sustain and reinforce slavery.

Among the practices examined are the treatment of enslaved people as taxable property, the use of import duties and fiscal incentives to influence racial demographics and strengthen White dominance, and the allocation of public funds to compensate slaveholders when enslaved individuals were executed or killed under the authority of the law.

Another important contribution of the book lies in its archival approach. Tax records frequently documented the names and financial claims of slaveholders while leaving enslaved individuals unnamed or invisible. By combining fiscal records with legislative materials, petitions, newspapers, pardons, and additional historical sources, the book reconstructs individual lives, uncovers acts of resistance, and reveals how legal memory has been selectively preserved.

Steven A. Dean, Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow

Professor Steven Dean’s book questions the traditional narrative that international tax law evolved primarily as a technical system designed to prevent double taxation. Instead, it traces the formation of today’s international tax regime during the period of decolonization and examines how institutional authority gradually shifted from the United Nations toward the OECD.

Using the concept of Global Jim Crow, the book explores how rules that favored residence-based taxation over source-based taxation, together with the design of double-tax treaties, institutional exclusion, corporate influence, and the authority exercised by expert communities, limited the fiscal sovereignty of newly independent nations. These developments redirected valuable resources away from education, healthcare, development, and other essential public priorities.

The book further examines the relationship between representation and the distribution of power. It asks whether simply granting formal participation in international institutions is enough when agenda-setting authority, technical expertise, bargaining strength, and the underlying rules governing taxing rights remain unequally distributed.

Since many readers may not have encountered the earlier posts in this series, the principal bibliography is reproduced below.

Selected Bibliography

Books in Dialogue

Dean, Steven A. (2025). Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow. Oxford: Oxford University Press – Examines how international tax law has historically contributed to racialized structures of economic power and inequality on a global scale.

Infanti, Anthony C. (2025). The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America. New York: New York University Press – Explores the relationship between taxation, slavery, and state-building in colonial America, highlighting the human costs embedded in fiscal and legal institutions.

Related Scholarship by Steven A. Dean

Racialized International Tax Law in Research Handbook on Critical Tax Studies (forthcoming Edinburgh University Press, Yvette Lind and Dominic de Cogan, eds.)

Fear of a Black Planet: Africa’s Decolonization and the Transformation of the International Tax Regime in Taxing People: The Next 100 Years (Cambridge University Press 2026, Tsilly Dagan and Ruth Mason, eds.)

Filing While Black: The Casual Racism of the Tax Law, 2022 Utah Law Review 801, available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4081456

Inclusive International Tax Policymaking: FATCA, the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, and the OECD Blacklist, Revue Européenne et Internationale de Droit Fiscal (2021) (Reprinted in Tax Notes International)

Ten Truths about Tax Havens: Inclusion and the ‘Liberia’ Problem, 70 Emory Law Journal 1657 (2021) (with Attiya Waris), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3822421

Dean’s SSRN Author Page: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=440250

Related Scholarship by Anthony Infanti

Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves (The MIT Press 2018).

Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, Anthony C. Infanti & Bridget J. Crawford eds., 2009). The Introduction is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1333799

International Equity and Human Development, in Tax, Law and Development (Edward Elgar Publishing, Miranda Stewart & Yariv Brauner eds., 2013).

Tax Equity, 55 Buffalo Law Review 1191 (2008), available at https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol55/iss4/5/

Tax and Time: On the Use and Misuse of Legal Imagination (NYU Press 2022), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4006652

Tax Reform Discourse, 32 Virginia Tax Review 205 (2012), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2034869

Critical Tax Theory: Insights from the US and Opportunities for All, 51 Australian Tax Review 81 (2022) (with Bridget J. Crawford), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4236410

Infanti’s SSRN Author Page.

Related Scholarship by Carliss N. Chatman

(2023). “Teaching Slavery in Commercial Law.” 28 Michigan Journal of Race & Law 1–38. SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 611. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3926671 – Considers how slavery and its lasting consequences can be incorporated more meaningfully into both the teaching and understanding of commercial law.

(2026). “The Contract and the Cure: Building a Private Infrastructure for Reparations.” In Slavery’s Long Tentacles: Entanglements in Historical and Modern Forms of Slavery (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). https://ssrn.com/abstract=6140369 – Examines how private law, contractual arrangements, and institutional design may contribute to reparative justice for the continuing harms caused by slavery.

(October 24, 2024). “1981”, 82 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1655 (2026), SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 666, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4998718 – Studies the ongoing importance of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and its role in responding to racial discrimination while promoting equality and access to economic opportunities.

(2018). “The Corporate Personhood Two-Step.” 18 Nevada Law Journal 811–862. Posted July 17, 2017; revised August 11, 2023. Chatman, Carliss, The Corporate Personhood Two-Step (June 25, 2017). 18 Nev. L. J. 811 (2018), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2992275 – Explores how corporate personhood doctrines influence corporate power, accountability, and the distribution of rights within contemporary systems of governance.

Chatman’s SSRN Author Page
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2419097

Related Scholarship by Paolo D. Farah

(2026). Epistemic Governance. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6487038 – Presents a framework for examining how knowledge, authority, expertise, and competing narratives shape governance systems, institutional legitimacy, and the organization of global order.

(2025) China’s Path to Modernization and Legal Pluralism: Transplants and the Belt and Road Initiative, Asian Journal of Law and Society, Cambridge University Press https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5215873 – Analyzes how competing legal traditions, models of governance, and development approaches contribute to emerging forms of legal pluralism and the reshaping of global order.

(2024). “Energy Justice, Just Transition and International Environmental Law.” In ASIL Proceedings (Just Energy Transition: Legal Challenges Associated with Coal Phase Out), Cambridge University Press. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5055884 – Examines how legal and governance systems affect the distribution of benefits and burdens during energy transitions, with attention to historical responsibility, distributive justice, institutional legitimacy, and the capacity of law to address structural inequalities connected to climate and energy transformation.

Farah’s SSRN Author Page
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=629289

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

Steven Dean

Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law

On Friday, the US celebrated Juneteenth.

Juneteenth (June 19th) marks the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas finally learned they were free. That was more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had legally freed them.

I hope you will all take a minute to belatedly (and very appropriately so) celebrate Juneteenth by registering for this webinar organized by Paolo Davide Farah (The University of Tulsa College of Law) and the European Society of International Law. It features me, Anthony Infanti (University of Pittsburgh School of Law), and Carliss Chatman (Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law – Company).

#Juneteenth #TaxJustice #InternationalLaw #RuleOfLaw #HumanRights #LegalScholarship #Webinar #HigherEducation #BULawProf #RacialJustice #CriticalTaxStudies #TaxPolicy

Paolo Davide Farah

Professor | Founder | Director

Launching the European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series

The full post is available at: https://lnkd.in/dqAu24sr

As Chair of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law, I am pleased to announce the launch of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series. This new initiative seeks to encourage critical, interdisciplinary discussion of several of the most urgent challenges confronting the rule of law today.

The initiative supports ESIL’s wider efforts to encourage engagement with current developments in international law through innovative online formats. It complements the ESIL Conversations initiative and the ESIL Teaching Corner Webinar Series while establishing a dedicated space for continuing dialogue on governance, justice, accountability, and the rule of law from European and international perspectives. Giulio Bartolini Patrycja Grzebyk Machiko Kanetake

It is especially appropriate that the series opens with a discussion of taxation, racial inequality, and historical injustice. These subjects encourage careful consideration of both the possibilities and the limits of the rule of law.

Inaugural Webinar

1 – Taxation, Racial Capitalism, and the International Rule of Law: From Colonial Slavery to Global Governance
Wednesday July 22, 2026 | 12:00–1:30 PM EST | Online

The inaugural webinar places two significant recent books in conversation: The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America by Anthony Infanti (University of Pittsburgh School of Law), New York University Press, and Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow by Steven Dean (Boston University School of Law) – Oxford University Press.

The discussion will consider how fiscal and legal systems have historically supported structures of domination, exclusion, and racialized inequality, beginning with the fiscal foundations of colonial America and extending to the modern global tax order. By discussing these books together, the webinar will examine the connections among taxation, racial capitalism, historical injustice, and the rule of law. It will also consider the ability of legal institutions to respond to inequalities from both the past and the present.

Paolo Davide Farah (The University of Tulsa College of Law) will chair the conversation, with Carliss Chatman (SMU Dedman School of Law) participating as discussant.

Participation is free and open to all.

Registration:
https://lnkd.in/dMhpmbda

The full post is available at: https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/07/18/steven-dean-on-juneteenth-tax-justice-and-the-upcoming-esil-webinar/