Florian Grisel

Florian Grisel is Associate Professor at the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS). Prior to joining the CSLS, he was Deputy-Director of the Centre de théorie et analyse du droit (University Paris 10 Nanterre - ENS), Research Fellow at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (Paris), and Reader in Transnational Law at King’s College London.

Florian graduated in law and social sciences from Sciences Po Paris (BA/MA), Columbia University (MPA, Rachel L. Spear Fellow), Yale Law School (LLM, Oscar Cox Fellow), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (PhD, Allocataire de recherche) and the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Habilitation). He is also admitted to practice law in Paris and New York.

Using a methodological approach combining archival research, interviews, and ethnographic work, Florian has undertaken two major research projects that contribute to exploring the emergence of law beyond the state, in both global and local settings. (1) The first research project analysed the emergence of international arbitration as a system of global justice. Drawing on as yet unexploited data, such as the archives of the International Chamber of Commerce, this project resulted in several publications, including a first monograph exploring and criticising the use of the notion of “legal order” in transnational settings (L'arbitrage international ou le droit contre l'ordre juridique, LGDJ, 2011); a second monograph tracking the development and judicialisation of international arbitration (The Evolution of International Arbitration: Judicialization, Governance, Legitimacy, Oxford University Press, 2017, with Alec Stone Sweet); and articles in leading journals, such as the European Journal of International Law, the Law & Society Review and the Journal of Law and Society. (2) Following this exploration of the emergence of global law beyond the state, the second research project focused on the study of a local system of private governance, taking as a case study a “private order” known as the Prud’homie de pêche, which has governed the fishery of Marseille for the past six centuries. Thanks to a grant from the French National Research Agency (ANR), this project gathered rich empirical data through archival research, interviews, and ethnographic work. This material provided the basis for: a monograph (The Limits of Private Governance: Norms and Rules in a Mediterranean Fishery, Hart, 2021); and articles in leading interdisciplinary journals such as the Law & Society Review and Fish & Fisheries.

Florian was awarded the Alexandre Varenne Prize (Legal Theory) in 2011 and the Médaille de Bronze of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in 2018. He is also listed as a Future Leader in International Arbitration by Who’s Who Legal and included in the Arbitration Powerlist by Legal 500. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of International Dispute Settlement and the Journal of Legal and Social Studies in South-East Europe, and a senior editor of Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies.

A list of his publications can be found here.