Interest Group Membership:

International Business and Human Rights, International Economic Law, International HR Law, International Legal Theory

Current Research:

Prof. Dr. iur. et lic. rer.pol. Anne van Aaken was one of the Vice Presidents of ESIL from 2014 to 2017 and has been a member of the Board since 2012. She is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor, Chair of for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law and Director of the Institute of Law and Economics at the University of Hamburg, She was the Professor for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland from 2006-2018. Before that she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Research of Collective Goods as well as at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. She holds a Master in Law from the University of Munich, a PhD in Law from the University of Frankfurt/Oder, a habilitation from the University of Osnabrück, a master degree in Economics and a diploma in communication science from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and is admitted to the bar in Germany. She was a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley and Yale Law School. She taught as a guest professor at several universities in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the United States (Columbia 2014 and NYU as a Global Law Professor 2016) and was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, Germany in 2010/11. She was the Vice-President of the European Association of Law and Economics, Chair of the Programmatic Steering Board of the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law and was a member of the founding Board of ICON-S. She is a Member of the ILA Committees on Investment Law (ended), Non-State Actors (ended) and Sanctions. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of EJIL, Member of the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Economic Law (OUP) and International Theory (CUP) as well as one of the Series Editors of the ESIL Book Series with OUP. She is also an elected member of the EUI Research Council.
Her main research areas are international law (international economic law, human rights law and environmental law), (international) legal theory, (behavioural) law and economics as well as corruption and state liability. She has published widely on those Topics in peer reviewed journals. She has been an expert consultant for the World Bank, the OECD, UNCTAD and GIZ (German Development Agency).

Key Publications:

Rational Choice in der Rechtswissenschaft. Zum Stellenwert der ökonomischen Theorie im Recht Dissertation (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2003)

Anne van Aaken/ Tom Ginsburg/ Christoph Engel (Eds.) International Law and Economics, Symposium Issue, Illinois Law Review (2008) Issue 1

Deliberative institutional economics, or Does Homo oeconomicus argue?: A proposal for combining new institutional economics with discourse theory. Philosophy & Social Criticism (2002) 28(4), pp. 361-394

Genügt das deutsche Recht den Anforderungen der VN-Konvention gegen Korruption? Eine rechtsvergleichende Studie zur politischen Korruption unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rechtslage in Deutschland. (ZaöRV) (2005) 65 (2), pp. 407-446.

Making International Human Rights Protection More Effective: A Rational Choice Approach to the Effectiveness of Provisions of Ius Standi. In: Conferences on New Political Economy, Vol. 23 (2006), pp. 29-58

Funktionale Rechtswissenschaftstheorie für die gesamte Rechtswissenschaft: Eine Skizze. In: Matthias Jestaedt/ Oliver Lepsius (Eds.) Rechtswissenschaftstheorie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) pp. 79-104.

Fragmentation of International Law: The Case of International Investment Pro-tection. Finnish Yearbook of International Law (2008) Vol. XVII, pp. 91-130.

Effectuating Public International Law Through Market Mechanisms? Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) (2009) 165(1), pp. 33-57

International Investment Law Between Commitment and Flexibility: A Contract Theory Analysis. Journal of International Economic Law (2009), 12(2), pp. 507-538

Defragmentation of International Law through Constitutional Interpretation: A Methodological Proposal. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (2009) 16(2), pp. 483–512

Independent Electoral Management Bodies – Any Impact on the Observed Level of Democracy? A Conceptual Framework. 20 Constitutional Political Economy, Issue 3/4 (2009), pp. 296–322

Prudence or Discrimination? Emergency Measures, the Global Financial Crisis and International Economic Law. 12 Journal of International Economic Law (2009), Issue 4, pp. 859-894 (with Jürgen Kurtz),

Accountability and Independence of International Election Observers. 6 International Organizations Law Review (2009) (with Richard Chambers), pp. 541-580

Can International Economic Law Constrain Protectionism? (long version) In: Simon Evenett/ Bernard Hoekman/ Olivier Cattaneo (Eds.) Effective Crisis Re-sponse and Openness: Implications for the Trading System (Washington DC: EBRD Publication, 2009), pp. 53

Balancing of Human Rights – Constitutional Interpretation in International Law. In: Miodrag Jovanovic (Ed.) Human Rights Today – 60 Years of the Universal Declaration (2010), pp. 51-67.

Primary and Secondary Remedies in Investment Arbitration and State Liability: A Functional and Comparative View. In: Stephan Schill (Ed.) International Investment Law and Comparative Public Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010), pp. 721-754.

Do Independent Prosecutors Deter Political Corruption? An Empirical Evaluation across 78 Countries. In: 12 American Law and Economics Review (2010), Issue 1, pp. 204-244 (with Stefan Voigt and Lars Feld)

Opportunities for and Limits to an Economic Analysis of International Economic Law. In: Transnational Corporations Review (March 2011), online: http://journal.tnc-online.org/ (Refereed journal), pp. 27-46.

A Functional Approach to International Constitutionalism: The Value Added of a Social Science Contribution. In: 127 ARSP Beiheft (2012), pp. 155-171.

Better Politics qua stricter Transparency Provisions for Parliamentarians? A Cross Country Assessment, in: 12 Economics of Governance 4 (2011), pp. 301-324 (with Stefan Voigt)

Trust, Verify or Incentivize? Effectuating Public International Law Regulating Public Goods Through Market Mechanisms, 104th Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 2011, pp. 153-156.

International Law: Rational Choice, in: Oxford Bibliographies Online, Oxford University Press, 2012 (peer-reviewed): available at: http://aboutobo.com/

Sustainable Development and International Investment Law: An Harmonious View from Economics. In: World Trade Forum/UNCTAD (Eds): New Directions and Emerging Challenges in International Investment Law and Policy (CUP, 2013)

Is International Law Conducive to Prevent Looming Disasters?. In: Anne van Aaken/Janis Antonovic (Eds.), Too Big to Handle? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Question of Why Societies Ignore Looming Disasters, 7 Global Policy, 2016

The Diversity Challenge: Exploring the “Invisible College” of International Arbitration. In: 53 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (2015), pp. 429-506 (together with Susan D. Franck, James Freda, Kellen Lavin, Tobias Lehmann)

Smart Flexibility Clauses in International Investment Treaties and Sustainable Development: A Functional View. In: 15 Journal of World Investment and Trade (2014), pp. 827-861.

Control Mechanisms in International Investment Law. In: Zacharias Douglas/Joost Pauwelyn/Jorge Vinuales (Eds.), The Foundations of International Investment Law: Bringing Theory into Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014), pp. 409-435.

Behavioral International Law and Economics. In: 55 Harvard International Law Journal (2014), pp. 421-481

Blurring Boundaries between Sovereign Acts and Commercial Activities. A Functional View on Regulatory Immunity and Immunity from Execution. In: Anne Peters/Evelyne Lagrange/Stefan Oeter (Eds.), Immunities in the Age of Global Constitutionalism (Leiden: Brill, 2016)

Shared Responsibilities in International Law: A Political Economy Analysis. In: André Nollkaemper and Dov Jacobs (eds.), Distribution of Responsibilities in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015), pp. 153-191

Judge the Nudge: In Search of the Legal Limits of Paternalistic Nudging in the EU. In: Alberto Alemanno and Anne Lise Sibony (eds.), Nudge and the Law. A European Perspective (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2015), pp. 83-112

Political Economy of International Law: Towards a Holistic Model of State Behavior. In Alberta Fabricotti (ed.), Political Economy of International Law: A European Perspec-tive (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016) (together with Joel Trachtman), pp. 9-43

Inside the Arbitrator’s Mind, 66 Emory Law Journal (2017), pp. 1115-1173 (together with Susan D. Franck, James Freda, Jeffrey J. Racklinski, and Chris Guthrie)

Behavioral Aspects of the International Law of Global Public Goods and Common Pool Resources, 112 (1) American Journal of International Law, 2018, pp. 67-79.