Florian Grisel

In brief: I am a Research Professor (Directeur de recherche) at the CNRS, based at the University of Strasbourg (Laboratoire SAGE), and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies). My research examines how law emerges and evolves in local and transnational settings, including beyond and at the margins of state authority. Using empirical methods and drawing on field and organizational theory, I study a range of organizations operating outside the state—including international courts, international arbitration, commons governance, and digital platforms. My work analyzes how these organizations interact with, reshape, and challenge state-based legal orders by producing their own forms of legality.

Disciplines: Law and Society, Sociology of Law

Research themes: Globalization of law, law and private governance, international courts, international arbitration

Ongoing funded projects:

• Codifying Digital Behaviour Around the World: A Socio-Legal Study of the Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct (funded by the Wikimedia Foundation Research Fund, with Giovanni de Gregorio)
• World Court? Globalising and Judicialising the International Court of Justice (funded by the Australian Research Council, with Esmé Shirlow)

Research Cluster at SAGE:  Axe 1 - Champ du pouvoir et représentation

Prizes: Médaille de bronze du CNRS (2018), Prix Alexandre Varenne (2011)

Books

• The Limits of Private Governance: Norms and Rules in a Mediterranean Fishery, Bloomsbury/Hart Publishing, 2021
• The Evolution of International Arbitration: Judicialization, Governance, Legitimacy (with Alec Stone Sweet), Oxford University Press, 2017

• L’arbitrage international ou le droit contre l’ordre juridique: Application et création du droit en arbitrage international, LGDJ, 2011

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Articles

• “The World in a Court: How the ICJ's Organizational Practices Promote Stability in a Contested Field,” Law and Society Review, 59/1, 2025, pp. 139-171 (with E. Shirlow)
• “Canceling Disputes: How Social Capital Affects the Arbitration of Disputes on Wikipedia,” Law and Social Inquiry, 49/2, 2024, pp. 1060-1081
• “The Judicial Manufacturers of International Law,” Law and Social Inquiry, 48/4, 2023, pp. 1465-1470
• “The Centres and Margins of Transnational Law: Potential Developments and Methodological Challenges,” Journal of Law and Society, 49(Suppl. 1), 2022, pp. S51-S63
• “How Migrations Affect Private Orders: Norms and Practices in the Fishery of Marseille,” Law and Society Review, 55/1, 2021, pp. 177-202
• “Managing the Fishery Commons at Marseille: How a Medieval Institution Failed to Accommodate Change in an Age of Globalisation,” Fish and Fisheries, 20/2, 2019, pp. 419-433
• “Competition and Cooperation in International Commercial Arbitration: The Emergence of a Transnational Legal Profession,” Law and Society Review, 51/4, 2017, pp. 790-824

• “Treaty-Making between Public Authority and Private Interests: The Genealogy of the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards,” European Journal of International Law, 28/1, 2017, pp. 73-87

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Full list of publications

 https://cnrs.academia.edu/FlorianGrisel | https://cv.hal.science/florian-grisel