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A public good (an example is a lighthouse) can be produced by private parties. However, they rarely are. Rather, such goods are generally thought of in economics as a type of commodity that government often provides and maintains because government can overcome the otherwise strong incentive to free ride on the efforts of others. This symposium issue is concerned with the global analogies to municipal public goods. As in the domestic context, global public goods are viewed as essential goods. But globally there is not a government. Instead, we observe a plurality of legal orders arrayed both horizontally and vertically, both publicly and privately. It is this mix of significance and complexity that is the subject of this symposium.
Together, the American and European Societies of International Law (ASIL and ESIL) devised a research forum to explore whether and how the co-existence, interaction, and antagonisms of a plurality of legal orders (international law, domestic law, European Union law, regimes established by private actors) and their driving agents (regulators, contract-makers, and courts and tribunals) contribute to creating and maintaining global public goods. With additional support from and sponsorship by the European Journal of International Law (EJIL) and the HiiL Project on Transnational Private Regulation, a symposium with participants from Europe and the United States was held at the European University Institute in October of 2011. That two-day conference is the basis for the articles collected in this symposium issue.
Foundational issues discussed in the symposium included:
a) the conceptual and analytical frameworks for understanding global public goods;
b) the modes and technologies of production of global public goods and the related governance and legitimacy issues that such techniques raise;
c) the value that the concept of global public goods adds to discourse within international law; and, vice versa, the value that an international law �
