Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Alemanno

LL.M Course 758 (cross-listed) | 1 credit hours

This unconventional and interdisciplinary course focuses on societies' efforts to assess and manage health, safety and environmental risks. As more and more citizens come to reap the benefits of open trade on a global scale, as well as extended lifespan and high quality of life, they also seem to expect public authorities to deliver more protection against those threats, whether industrial or natural. Amid contemporary preoccupations with risks, managing threats to society has become one of the central tasks of governments. However, due to their inherent global dimension, risks today call for global governance solutions. Case studies of global risk regulation are drawn from a broad range of issue areas, including food safety regulation, international trade law, nanotechnologies, chemicals regulation, health law and aviation safety (see the latest airplane groundings in Europe). A special focus will be devoted to the important question of the role of science and technical expertise in reaching decisions about how to assess and manage global risks. Moreover, differences existing between US and European risk regulation, due inter alia to diverging administrative cultures and risk perception systems, will be highlighted along the course.