International law has been developed over the last hundred years. The past years a tendency has arisen to organise tailor-made approaches for specific sectors by e.g. regulations, codes of conduct or other forms of soft law. This kind of law is called soft law, it is in many cases effective, involved organisations comply with these standards and sometimes certain regulations can function as an example or a model for other sectors or public actors. However, without acknowledgement of such regulations in a treaty or other official form of public or private international lawmaking, its legitimacy is limited. Public and private international law brought about by public actors is to the contrary always legitimate but sometimes lacks efficiency, enforcement mechanisms or timeliness. During this seminar we will discuss how to make use of the best of both worlds. How to develop soft law into hard law, how to 'export' regulations or codes of conduct and similar questions spring to mind.

WLF will address what international public law can learn from the private sector and how private structures can strengthen the development of international public law. Vice versa, it should be clear were the public sector can or should support private international lawmaking.