Legality and legitimacy in global administrative law

Abstract

Adopting a systematic approach, this paper sketches out three ways of questioning the legitimacy of GAL. It distinguishes between the legal, liberal and democratic forms of legitimacy and analyses their application to GAL. The argument in this article is that there is a necessary connection between legality and legitimacy, and that the legitimacy of GAL is conceptually problematic. This is not to deter future research on GAL; on the contrary, we cannot do without a comprehensive legal theory of global governance. In the final section, the pragmatic approach of GAL is compared with the more ample ambition of global constitutionalism to provide a comprehensive narrative of contemporary international law.