Category: Elaine Fahey

Facebook/Meta Oversight Board: International and Regional Law Applications

Giulia Alves Maia

The Facebook / Meta Oversight Board (OB) is one of the most novel developments in law and governance in recent years. The Oversight Board has ignited a major debate about its character, form, operation, and effects. It has been modelled as a “Facebook Supreme Court”, and its structure and style of its reasoning, as well as its use of precedent, give the appearance that the OB operates in a similar way to a court. On 26 April 2023, City Law School hosted a hybrid event entitled The Facebook/Meta Oversight Board: International and Regional Law Applications to discussion these and other issues.

Continue reading

Introducing the EUFutures Research Network: Inter-Disciplinary Approaches to Connecting EU Law, Policy and Politics

Professor Elaine Fahey, Dr Fabien Terpan, and Dr Rebecca Zahn

The future of EU legal integration is at a significant juncture with the departure of the UK, substantial rule of law challenges, internal and external crises, and an increasingly apathetic multilateral legal order. There is increased recognition amongst EU lawyers, who have historically limited themselves to doctrinal analysis and legal hermeneutics, that methodology plays an essential role in order to understand EU integration and shape its future (van Gestel & Micklitz, 2014). Certain schools now advocate that the future of EU law must become more methodologically grounded to realise its scientific benefits and to broaden the reach of lawyers beyond the doctrinal (Dyevre, Wijtvliet & Lampach, 2019). For example, anthropological and sociological approaches have given us a sense of how various national and international actors use EU law to achieve their goals (Vauchez & De Witte, 2013). Quantitative studies have offered new insights into the practices of courts and the effectiveness of legislative design (Larsson and Naurin, 2016; Larsson et al. 2017).

Continue reading

The EU as a Global Digital Actor: Institutionalising Global Data Protection, Trade, and Cybersecurity

Elaine Fahey 

In my recently published book, The EU as a Global Digital Actor: Institutionalising Global Data Protection, Trade, and Cybersecurity I have sought to try to capture a range of issues emerging as to the EU’s digital and international relations agenda.

Continue reading

The EU and its Member States’ Joint Participation in International Agreements

Three academics from The City Law School – Elaine Fahey, Panos Koutrakos and Jed Odermatt – have contributed to a new edited volume The EU and its Member States’ Joint Participation in International Agreements (Hart 2022). The volume is based on contributions presented at a workshop held at the University of Geneva in November 2020.

EU law has developed a unique and complex system under which the Union and its Member States can both act under international law, separately, jointly or in parallel. International law was not set up to deal with such complex and hybrid arrangements, which raise questions under both international and EU law. Thie book assesses how EU law has been adapted to cope with the constraints of international law in situations in which the EU and its Member States act jointly in relations with other States and international organisations. Each chapter was jointly written by a team of two authors. The various contributions offer new insights into the tension that continues to exist between EU and international law obligations in relation to the (joint) participation of the EU and its Member States in international agreements.

Continue reading

The Transatlantic Space Between Shifting Administrations: The Place of the EU and US in the Global Legal Order

Elaine Fahey and Giulio Kowalski

An online workshop took place on 2 July 2021 at City Law School  ‘The Transatlantic Space Between Shifting Administrations: The Place of the EU and US in the Global Legal Order’ organised by the Jean Monnet Chair in Law & Transatlantic Relations and Institute for the Study of European Law (ISEL) at City Law School, funded by Erasmus+ programme.

Continue reading

Introducing “Understanding the EU as a Good Global Governance Actor” – a forthcoming edited collection with Edward Elgar Publishing

Elaine Fahey and Isabella Mancini

“Understanding the EU as a Good Global Governance Actor: ambitions, direction and values” is the provisional title of a book project forthcoming with Edward Elgar in 2022 and edited by (Elaine Fahey City Law School) and Isabella Mancini (City Law School/ Brunel Law School).

Continue reading

Trump’s Facebook ban upheld – but the future of the oversight board is in doubt

Elaine Fahey

Referred to by some as Facebook’s “supreme court”, the oversight board tasked with reversing or upholding Facebook’s content moderation decisions has ruled that the social media company’s ban of Donald Trump should be maintained.

The board upheld Facebook’s January 7 decision to ban then-President Trump from posting content on Facebook and Instagram, after his social media activity was partially blamed for inciting the violence at the January 6 Capitol riots, during which five people died. However, the board noted that indefinite suspensions were not described in Facebook’s content policies – and so the ban will be reviewed again in six months.

Continue reading

Work in progress: The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as a “platform” for shaping future trade relationships

Giulio Kowalski

After four years of turbulent discussions and 1,400 pages of complex provisions, the EU and the UK (the “Parties”) signed the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) on 24 December 2020. Now that the much-feared risk of a no-deal Brexit seems to have been avoided, it could be high time to start digging into the details of the TCA and critically assess whether it is an effective and all-encompassing regulation or just a “platform” created in view of future negotiations and developments in the EU/UK (trading) relationships.

Continue reading

The International Dimension of Brexit

Legal debates about Brexit have mostly focused on the legal issues that arise under EU law and UK law and the impact of Brexit on the EU and UK. A recent book edited by Juan Santos Vara and Ramses A. Wessel analyses the international dimension of Brexit. The book examines the implications of Brexit for the external relations of both the EU and UK.

Researchers at City Law School – Professor Elaine Fahey, Professor Panos Koutrakos and Jed Odermatt – contributed chapters that examine some of the challenges arising from the UK’s departure from the European Union, with a focus on the international dimension.

Continue reading

New Book: Framing Convergence with the Global Legal Order: The EU and the World

Elaine Fahey

The new book, Framing Convergence with the Global Order: The EU and the World, edited by Professor Elaine Fahey, Jean Monnet Chair in Law and Transatlantic Relations at the University of London’s City Law School, explores EU convergence in the global order, drawing on a range of disciplines to illuminate the themes of global convergence and the EU’s role in a turbulent international environment.  The contributors find that, although the EU remains a driving force behind a rules-based international order, the methodology of depicting complex case studies remains contestable.   Continue reading

© 2023 City Law Forum

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑

Skip to toolbar