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Nottage, Luke --- "Commercial regulation*" [2012] ELECD 975; in Smits, M. Jan (ed), "Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) 157

Book Title: Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, Second Edition

Editor(s): Smits, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804158

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Commercial regulation*

Author(s): Nottage, Luke

Number of pages: 12

Abstract/Description:

Until the early 1980s, comparative lawyers were mostly interested in the doctrinal implications of distinguishing rules and institutions dedicated to ‘commercial law’ from other aspects of civil or private law. Especially as states intervened more in economies, some tried to incorporate these developments into broader notions of ‘economic law’ or ‘business law’. Over the 1980s and particularly since the 1990s, however, more analysts have realized that ‘hard law’ promulgated and enforced by national authorities is only one way of regulating commercial behavior and expectations. Private and semi-private norms and dispute resolution processes within states, and growing regional and transnational dimensions even to hard law, underpin the emergence of ‘commercial regulation’ as a broader research agenda. An older strand of regulation theory had been built around the idea that regulators pursue the public interest. A newer strand acknowledged that they can pursue, instead or in addition, their private interests. Particularly under the latter approach, the main focus was on how regulation might be most efficiently generated and applied to achieve predefined goals.