Experts, Democracy and the Law
Ideally, government should be democratic, lawful, and informed by expertise that aims to produce some gain in the general social condition. Notoriously, though, those commendable and widely shared ambitions often conflict. Liberal-democratic societies have found ways, or have thought that they had found, ways of harmonizing the divergent demands. Foremost among the institutional mechanisms is a professionalized bureaucracy, capable of mobilizing specialized expertise but subject both to democratic legitimation and to legal control, judicial as well as legislative.
Of late, that basic governance model seems to have come under assault on both sides of the Atlantic. Institutions that purport to represent an expert consensus have pursued very ambitious initiatives—fine-tuning monetary stability and a “goldilocks” economy, stamping out a pandemic, de-carbonizing industrial economies—and have encountered heightened public distrust and sometimes visceral popular reactions. Inchoate responses have ranged from initiatives to decimate expert bureaucracies to demands for more democratic accountability to pleas that government should become, if not more lawful and democratic, then at least more competent and effectual. In short, the perennial tensions between technocracy, democracy, and lawful government have become more vivid than they have been for quite some time—perhaps, a full century.
At the Transatlantic Law Forum’s 14th Annual Conference, prominent academics, practicing lawyers, judges, policymakers, and public intellectuals will explore the salient topic from a wide range of political, professional and national perspectives. We hope to generate the cordial, riveting, and informative exchange of views that has always been the TLF’s singular goal and accomplishment.
About the Transatlantic Law Forum
The Transatlantic Law Forum (TLF), originally founded by Michael Zoeller (Emeritus, Bayreuth University) and Michael Greve (Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School) is a project of the Antonin Scalia Law School’s Law & Economics Center (https://masonlec.org/). Its objective is to foster a transatlantic dialogue on salient questions of law and public policy. Past conference topics have ranged from “The Business of Law” to “Citizenship” and “The Financial Crisis and the Rule of Law.”
The 2025 TLF Conference is organized in cooperation with the ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, one of Europe’s leading institutes for research and commentary on political, economic, legal and social integration and the evolving European order.
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The LEC’s Henry G. Manne Program in Law & Economics Studies promotes law and economics scholarship by funding faculty research, convening research roundtables, and hosting policy-relevant academic workshops and conferences.
Established in 2010 to honor the legacy of Henry G. Manne – legendary former Dean of the Antonin Scalia Law School, founder of the Law & Economics Center, and one of the founding fathers of the law and economics movement – the program seeks to improve the quality of legal scholarship by offering educational workshops on important and topical areas of study.
Since its founding, the LEC’s workshops and research roundtables have included more than 10,000 participants from 543 academic institutions. In addition to its core constituency of academics, Manne Program events also attract attendance from the policy community, including economists and lawyers from federal agencies, Capitol Hill, state government offices, and the non-profit and for-profit research sectors.
Questions:
If you have any questions, please contact Gwendolyn Watson at [email protected] or 703.993.8388.