After a long, Covid-caused hiatus, the Transatlantic Law Forum (TLF) is gathering again. The topic of the TLF’s 2024 Conference is A New Era of Disintegration? The Law, Economics and Politics of Multilevel Markets in the EU and the US.
Within living memory, politics in the United States and the European Union were supported by a general consensus on economic, political, and legal integration as a convincing strategy to ensure sustained progress for liberal democracy. This consensus was rooted in their internal governance: both continental polities were built around a combination of centrally-enforced market openness with substantial autonomy for the diverse preferences of their member-states. Externally, these principles supported a vision of free trade across borders that would promote prosperity within a “rules-based” order managed by cooperative, supra-national institutions. Economic openness and shared institutions would homogenize the world in fundamental ways—encouraging rule of law and democracy in autocratic or recently-autocratic states—while still allowing for a wide range of democratic national choices.
That consensus, to be sure, was never entirely uncontested or wholly stable on either side of the Atlantic. Of late, however, it has come under far more severe strains, and the optimism of an earlier era has given way to worry. Internally, Americans’ long-running tensions between national market rules and “states’ rights” have sharpened with growing policy divergences between “red” and “blue” states. Europeans have seen substantial backlash against the constraints of their Single Market and monetary union. Globally, the U.S. and the EU alike are seeking to “de-couple” or “de-risk” their economies from trade partners that have not only remained autocratic but have become belligerent. We might have expected global crises like the Covid pandemic and climate change to increase the demand for international coordination, but that has not been the main storyline. Instead we see growing fragmentation at two levels. Not only have the U.S. and the EU pursued their own distinct approaches, but EU countries and American states have chosen paths of their own, often at variance with one another and usually in a mercantilist frame of mind.
True to its mission and tradition of exploring, on a comparative transatlantic basis, questions broadly related to the rule of law, the 2024 TLF will subject these issues to a focused examination and engaged discussion. How have the institutions that produce law on both sides of the Atlantic—legislatures, bureaucracies, courts—responded to the changed environment? How should they respond? Are the tendencies just worrisome, or do they perhaps signal a renewed appreciation of the virtues of localism and variegation? If so, how should or could political institutions that are designed for centralization respond? And to what degree are there (and should there be) different American and European answers to these questions? Both for their own internal choices and for the prospects of their partnership in global politics, comparative engagement is crucial.
Distinguished experts from both sides of the Atlantic, ranging from all kinds of political perspectives and a wide range of disciplines—legal scholars; practicing lawyers and judges; economists and political scientists—will explore the conference theme in depth. Topics include internal-market openness, democracy and market constitutionalization, private law, subsidies and climate change, innovation and digital markets, labor mobility and migration, integration in financial services, and the relationship between courts, law and politics across all these issues.
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. 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 2024 TLF Conference is organized in cooperation with the ARENA Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo.
Questions? Please contact the Manne Program team at LECManne@gmu.edu or by phone at 703.993.2566.