Iterative Engagements: The European Union and International Normativity

Abstract

The process of internalizing international norms into domestic law is a matter of contention in all polities, to varying degrees of intensity. Harold Koh’s provocative thesis of transnational norm generation - of nation state and transnational private actors blending national and international legal processes such that international norms are internalized into domestic law - is considerably less provocative in the European Union than in its country of origin. Whereas public international law can elsewhere be seen principally as a constraint on independent action, the EU has frequently deployed it as an instrument for the advancement of European integration. As such, the process of ‘translation’ is less a matter of hypothetical speculation in the European Union than a known mode of legal and political activity. Commencing with some brief stage setting, this short paper analyzes two separate bodies of international legal norms - those pertaining to anthropogenic climate change; and business and human rights - and argues that in the EU context at least, ‘translation’ is best seen as one part of a highly iterative process of dynamic relations between levels.