The Lex Mercatoria Publica Project at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg has issued a Call for Papers on “The (Comparative) Constitutional Law of Private-Public Arbitration” to be held on 21-22 November 2014. The deadline for responding to the Call is 15 September 2014.

Arbitrations between private economic actors and public law bodies are on the rise. Arbitrators, instead of domestic courts, now settle a wide variety of private-public disputes, ranging from the simple non-fulfillment of contractual obligations to complex disputes about the limits of states’ regulatory powers. This raises questions of legitimacy and concerns for principles of constitutional law, such as democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of fundamental rights, because governments are controlled, and the concrete delineation of private rights and public interests is drawn, not by democratically legitimized domestic courts, but by party-appointed one-off arbitral tribunals.The ERC-funded Lex Mercatoria Publica Project under the direction of Dr. Stephan Schill (for a brief description see www.lex-mp.de<http://www.lex-mp.de) aims at developing a framework for assessing legitimacy concerns relating to private-public arbitration. For this purpose, a workshop is convened at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg on November 21-22, 2014, which focuses on the constitutional law of private-public arbitration in a comparative perspective. It aims to receive contributions from participants that will address, in the form of national reports or (regional) comparative analyses, how a specific jurisdiction (e.g., Spain, Egypt, or Russia), a group of countries (e.g., West-Africa, Central-Asia, Central Europe), or a regional organization (e.g., OHADA, ASEAN) approach and regulate private-public arbitration and how they ensure that the public interest is safeguarded when public entities agree to arbitrate disputes.

Original and non-published submissions from both junior and senior academics and practitioners are invited on the themes outlined above. An abstract of max. 800 words and the applicant’s CV should be sent (in .pdf or .doc format) to lex-mp@mpil.de<mailto:lex-mp@mpil.de by 15 September 2014. Abstracts must include the legal order(s) considered, the approach taken by the author, and the major arguments to be made. If you are unable to attend the workshop, but are interested in contributing to the edited volume, we are equally happy to receive your statement of interest. Please direct inquiries to lex-mp@mpil.de<mailto:lex-mp@mpil.de.

 For further details see the complete Call.