A Festschrift for Michael Reisman

I, along with an impressive group of legal scholars from around the world, have gathered in New Haven to celebrate the career and scholarship of Yale Law Professor W. Michael Reisman. So, a wonderful opportunity to blog! But I forgot to bring my laptop, so all I have is my lousy iPhone.

Still, I will try to share a few observations during the day. The first panel I attended, on Reisman’s influence on trade and investment law was a bit dry, but had some interesting moments, especially on the relationship between civil society and international institutions. This is, of course, a “transnationalist” bunch that tends to privilege international cooperation as a solution to most problems.

But as Reisman himself emphasized in a trenchant comment: the next generation of international lawyers must focus on improving the role of domestic stakeholders in the processes of international cooperation because domestic stakeholders are much more likely to be necessary to fulfill international obligations.

I don’t doubt he is generally right about this. And that the trend in international law scholarship is strongly in this direction, and has been in this direction for some time. Global civil society, norms, networks, transnational legal process, etc. But it is interesting to see a leading but also a longtime scholar (40 plus years!) like Reisman make this observation.