13 - Bureaucrats in the Classroom? Epistemic Governance and the Expert Legal Scholar

Summary

Over the last decade or so, international lawyers have started to pay some attention to the role of experts in international decision-making processes (both EU and other international organisations), focusing on the identity of experts, their disciplinary backgrounds, how seemingly neutral expertise helps shape policy, and to what extent (if at all) experts can be held accountable. Perhaps surprisingly, while much attention is devoted to the role of economists, engineers, and scientists, little attention is paid to international legal academics as experts. And yet, without conceit, it is possible to argue that international law scholars too may come to affect the world around them, precisely in their professional, expert capacities: through their research and publications, through their peer activities (reviewer, board member), and through their teaching. Using the notion of epistemic governance and framing expertise as a power to tell stories, this chapter zooms in on the influence exercised by international law academics as experts influencing policy-processes, discussing in particular those aspects of influence that usually go unnoticed.