International Economic Law in the 21st Century

Introduction

The state-centred Westphalian model of international law has failed to protect human rights and other international public goods effectively. Most international trade, financial and environmental agreements do not even refer to human rights, consumer welfare, democratic citizen participation and transnational rule of law for the benefit of citizens.

Multilevel Governance Failures

This book argues that these multilevel governance failures are largely due to inadequate regulation of the collective action problems in the supply of international public goods, such as inadequate legal, judicial and democratic accountability of governments vis-a-vis citizens.

Human Rights and International Cooperation

Rather than treating citizens as mere objects of intergovernmental economic and environmental regulation and leaving multilevel governance of international public goods to discretionary foreign policy, human rights and constitutional democracy call for civilizing and constitutionalizing international economic and environmental cooperation by stronger legal and judicial protection of citizens and their constitutional rights in international economic law.

Principles of Justice and Constitutional Restraints

Moreover intergovernmental regulation of transnational cooperation among citizens must be justified by principles of justice and multilevel constitutional restraints protecting rights of citizens and their public reason. The reality of constitutional pluralism requires respecting legitimately diverse conceptions of human rights and democratic constitutionalism.

Restraints on Governance

The obvious failures in the governance of interrelated trading, financial and environmental systems must be restrained by cosmopolitan, constitutional conceptions of international law protecting the transnational rule of law and participatory democracy for the benefit of citizens.