This chapter attempts to understand whether and how the increased compliance with due process principles within standards development organizations (SDOs) affects legitimacy and effectiveness of ICT standards. In this regard, it also aims to reveal whether private standards bodies weaken the role of international standards bodies in the ICT sector, and whether the low degree of balance in private standards bodies undermines the legitimacy of modern global economic activity. It further suggests what should be the role of different stakeholders (e.g., SDOs, governments, and courts) in strengthening the different types of legitimacy in ICT standardization, underscoring the importance of feedback mechanisms for SDOs’ decision-making that is currently insufficient or absent from the SDOs’ operational frameworks.

Diversity has become increasingly important as an analytic concept and organising principle in the general scientific community. Advancing diversity is seen to be even more essential in a global science-policy interface such as the IPCC. Being able to claim to speak from a broad perspective of geographies, genders and experiences is considered to be important if the IPCC is to produce legitimate and authoritative climate knowledge for policy. This chapter applies a critical lens to examine the IPCC’s procedures and practices in selecting its authors with respect to securing a diverse base of expertise across gender, geography and experience. It then considers how diversity is important, identifying different logics – substantive and instrumental – that have guided the IPCC’s efforts to date. The chapter concludes by considering why diversity should matter and what possibilities are opened for global climate knowledge-making through enhanced capacity building.

This chapter argues that downplaying science in the judicial inquiry has a fundamental impact on the ways in which legitimate and persuasive reasoning can be crafted. More particularly, not respecting the cognitive authority of science undermines the epistemic legitimacy of decisions. The central yardstick in this respect is not that using more science would necessarily result in better-reasoned judgments; rather, the legitimacy of judgments hinges on how adjudicators reflect on the scientific aspects of disputes in the reasoning. The chapter identifies four types of epistemic yardsticks with which international fora justify the acceptance or rejection of a particular science-based claim. The chapter differentiates between legal, scientific, hybrid, and intuitive reasoning styles, and discusses the benefits and trade-offs of each of them in terms of factual accuracy, epistemic non-arbitrariness, practical feasibility, and preserving the judicial monopoly over adjudication. The chapter also offers solutions for remedying applicable shortcomings, and offers recommendations for selecting a sound approach to scientific knowledge in the judicial reasoning under particular circumstances.

This chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and shows that the judicial function bestows a truly interdisciplinary task on judges, which confers epistemic responsibilities on legal adjudicators. It argues that judges deciding international environmental disputes should be more active and thorough in terms of reflecting on the scientific profile of disputes both in the judicial assessment and in their reasoning.