International Standards and the Law

International Standards are of growing importance in several fields of law; they are, for example, widespread in finance and capital markets law, where more than 60 International Standards may be counted, and they are increasingly pre-valent in areas such as company, tax and labour law. Although originally non-binding, International Standards are complied with either by the parties to whom they are addressed or through their adoption and implementation in national laws. This book – the result of a conference on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Institute of European and International Business Law of the University of St. Gallen – addresses some of the questions that are raised by this phenomenon. It is a compilation of essays that focuses on diverse aspects of International Standards, such as their relationship to the law in general, their function in the international order, their increasing importance in several fields of law, their characteristics and their implications for lawmaking.