Editorial

In this first issue of the fifth volume of the Cambridge Journal of International and
Comparative Law, the authors grapple with the broad theme of rule-making in
its many forms. To that end, the authors cover rule-making in both international
law, European Union (EU) law and domestic law. They consider the perspectives
of the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and that ever-amorphous concept,
‘civil society’. In so doing, certain cross-cutting themes emerge, such as the role of
experts and the judiciary, regulatory competency as well as public participation
and transparency in rule-making.
The first article to explore the idea of rule-making in this issue is ‘Global Public
Goods and Democracy in International Legal Scholarship’, by Samuel Cogolati,
Linda Hamid and Nils Vanstappen. These authors argue that international legal
scholarship could contribute to democratically defining Global Public Goods. In
particular, Cogolati, Hamid and Vanstappen contend that two modern approaches
to international law—global administrative law and global constitutionalism—
could play a particularly prominent role in including world citizens in the process
of defining the global public domain. Specifically, global administrative law and
global constitutionalism could import new participatory mechanisms to the global
regulatory sphere and could include non-state actors in the process of international
law-making.