Joseph was awarded an LLB in Law with German Law by University College London and Cologne University, Germany, and a PhD by the European University Institute, Italy, for his thesis, Manifesto for the European Court: Democracy, decentred governance and the process-perfecting judicial shadow. He was also called to the Bar and published as a Barrister (non-practicing) and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
He researches in the area of expertise and constitutionalism, particularly lawmaking outside traditional constitutional structures (including the EU, independent regulatory agencies, private bodies and transnational public, private and hybrid networks). He draws on constitutional, political and European integration theory, but grounds that theory by applying it to specific fields, including the regulation of telecoms, energy, food and drugs.
Within the broad theme of expertise and complex policymaking, he has written on combining lay and scientific opinion when making public policy to deal with scientifically uncertain health risks; the accountability structures when using pharmacoeconomics to ration public health services; and where Corporate Social Responsibility ends and public policy starts. He has a particular interest in administrative law theory and the constitutional role of the judiciary.
He has conducted research for the European Commission and led an AHRC-funded research project in collaboration with the University of Bristol, Making Europe in their Image: Communities of expertise and the shaping of transnational governance that investigated a significant trend in European integration towards networking national policymakers who then discipline one another's work softly, via peer-review, rather than through centralised institutions and hard law.
Joseph is the Undergraduate Admissions Tutor and coordinates undergraduate induction and mooting, both internally and externally.
German
Joseph is the Module Leader for the undergraduate modules, Legal Method and EU Internal Market Law, and for the Masters module Contemporary Issues of EU Law and Governance. In these modules he covers legal methods and theory, foundations of law, legal and judicial reasoning, legal ethics, EU and transnational law and governance, as well as political, constitutional and integration theory.
He supervises PhDs in the fields of legal and political theory as well as EU and international law and governance. He currently co-supervises the following PhDs:
Corkin, Joseph (2019) The liberal order: holed below the waterline or a ship that we can rebuild at sea? In: On Brexit: Law, Justices and Injustices. Ahmed, Tawhida and Fahey, Elaine , eds. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 253-271. ISBN 9781789903003
Corkin, Joseph (2019) Confederacy for now: European (dis)integration as virtuous circle or vicious cycle? Working Paper. European Commission, Leuven.
Corkin, Joseph (2018) Refining relative authority: the judicial branch in the new separation of powers. In: Allocating Authority: Who Should do What in European and International Law? Mendes, Joana and Venzke, Ingo , eds. Hart, pp. 159-182. ISBN 9781509911936
Boeger, Nina and Corkin, Joseph (2017) Institutional path-dependencies in Europe’s networked modes of governance. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies , 55 (5). pp. 974-992. ISSN 0021-9886
Corkin, Joseph (2017) Who, then, in [European] law, is my neighbour? Limiting the argument from external effects. In: Framing the Subject and Objects of Contemporary EU Law. Bardutzky, Samo and Fahey, Elaine , eds. Edward Elgar, pp. 72-102. ISBN 9781786435736
'Evaluation of BEREC and the BEREC Office' (with N. Boeger, S. Hanssens, A. Kauffmann, P. Pierre, S. Simpson and K. Szenci), Study commissioned by the European Commission (March 2012-October 2012) (€125,000 total contract)
'Making Europe in their Image: Communities of expertise and the shaping of transnational governance' (Principal Investigator, in collaboration with N. Boeger, University of Bristol), AHRC grant reference AH/I020306/1 (1 October 2011-30 June 2013) (£88,002)
