Despite attempts to confine its jurisdiction to the economic sphere, the World Trade Organization has become an increasingly important site for the construction of global governance as a whole, health and environment in particular. The nature of its legal rules both their binding status and their interpretive flexibility makes the WTO and its legal process a key locus for the constitution of normative order and of regulatory power. Exploring the role of science within WTO legal process and ideology, this paper argues the importance of science as idea and practice in constituting, often tacitly, global normative hierarchies as well as new spheres of regulatory power over life.
Comment: Tonya Putnam.
David Winickoff is Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Society in the Division of Society & Environment, in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at UC Berkeley. Winickoff studies the interaction of science, norms, and politics of human health and the environment, with a particular focus on the governance of biotechnology. His research focuses on the regulation of life and life science in comparative and international contexts: intellectual property, environmental protection, food safety, human research subject protection, and public health.
This talk is part of Stanford's Seminar on Science, Technology, and Society.