Experts increasingly play a more central role at all levels of public governance. As holders of expert knowledge, they are considered trustworthy providers of certainty and answers in the face of increased complexity, interdependence and the fast-changing pace of life. The authoritative certainty to which they lay claim causes them to be frequently called upon and consulted by policy-makers. Their importance has increased as policy-making has become more complex and intense.

The essay discusses the character of transnational legal expertise as a practice of making and unmaking of conceptual distinctions and moving between principles that reflect different institutionally embedded legal projects. At the same time, lawyers are trained also to carry out rhetorical performances that create the impression that these countervailing legalities may be stabilized through techniques of balancing. As a consequence, the transnational legal space appears both as a field of struggle and professional solidarity. Even as lawyers regard this as nothing other than a natural feature of the casuistry of the law itself, it alienates lay audiences that have drawn from lawyers’ constant disagreement the conclusion that legal expertise is just a species of elite opinion.