A 'governance perspective' on law focuses not simply on what the rules are and what the authoritative sources of law are, but asks how the law is really made and applied and altered, how to evaluate this from functional and normative standpoints (does some particular legal structure achieve certain practical goals, optimally promote individual autonomy or deliberative democracy or distributive justice), and how these things might be better achieved. Applying such perspectives to law beyond the state, and to elements of state law that reflect extra-state structures or agendas, generates new research questions and insights. The Global Administrative Law project (iilj.org/GAL) at NYU Law School, with partner institutions and comparable projects around the world, provides one approach to doing this. GAL posits that much global governance is administration, whether by inter-governmental treaty organizations such as the Security Council individual sanctions or the World Bank in its project lending, or by inter-governmental networks such as the Financial Action Task Force or the Financial Stability board, or hybrid public-private bodies such as the Codex Alimentarius, or private bodies such as the International Olympic Committee, or state agencies such as the US EPA or FDA. It explores the application to such administrative powers, of principles concerning transparency, reason-giving, review mechanisms, some participation rights, and accountability structures. It invites normative critique, in exploring questions such as: who are the winners and losers of this procedural approach to GAL?; does good process provide legitimacy for basically unjust substantive outcomes? More than 100 papers have been written from this perspective, including several very successful doctoral theses.