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This chapter considers a second major structural feature of the American system potentially affected by transatlantic regulatory cooperation: the separation of powers. It focuses on the central role that the US President has historically played in advancing forms of international cooperation via the use of executive agreements, i.e. international compacts signed by the President without the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, as is constitutionally required for treaties. Nearly all trade-related agreements entered into by the United States in fact take the form of executive agreements. This chapter questions the ‘discourse of executive expediency’ that has been used to justify deviation from constitutionally mandated treaty procedures, and concludes that executive agreements, in light of serious questions as to their legal effect, are in fact a poor instrument for implementing regulatory cooperation.

This chapter sets out the significant interplay with and impact of exchanges with overseas policing paradigms, paying particular attention to the historic links between Northern Ireland and America and the close relationship with the Policing Board from the moment of its establishment, including both participation in annual visits to the White House by Board members and others involved in policing in Northern Ireland, and contacts with the US Consul General in Belfast. The chapter also notes the international conference in Belfast in February 2007 arranged by the Board addressing both progress made in Northern Ireland and developments in policing internationally, and the many visits to the Board by representatives from foreign countries as well as overseas fact-finding trips by Board members. The concluding section begins with an assessment by Mary Alice Clancy of the role played by the US Presidents’ special envoys to Northern Ireland, and ends with an analysis of the importance of the exchanges with American police and policy-makers in particular.

The efficient arrangement of standards based on the measuring and unifying gaze of the molecular life sciences finds its correlate in standards of socially, politically, and ethically responsible behavior. This convergence paves the way for a future in which the standardization of life is explicitly advanced at the biological and societal level. In this context, one of the most rapidly developing areas of research is synthetic biology, which has set for itself the goal of rearranging life by (re)designing its components. In this chapter we present examples of this systematically pursued goal, ranging from the mining of microbial diversity in the ocean to the register of standard biological parts. Yet the most far reaching implications of the synbio style of working are revealed by an astonishing example. While conventionally not listed under the synbio label, this captures its defining feature at its fullest, namely the coupling of biological and moral standards in the design of new forms of life. The syntheticization of the future thus raises design to the leading principle. On the one hand, this is a logical extension of engineering. On the other hand, it makes clear that designing standards is much more than a question of technology.