As loyal readers may recall, we’ve made an effort in recent years to highlight some of the best forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent scholarship. However, since those compilations are tied to the US Law Review cycle and focus on accepted-but-not-yet-published pieces, they tend to exclude most global LPE scholarship. To rectify this oversight, we decided to pull together some of our favorite pieces of global scholarship from this past year. As always, there is more excellent work being done than any editorial staff could possibly track, so please think of the following listicle as merely one Blog’s personal Eat, Pray, Love journey across the wide world of LPE scholarship.
***
Ntina Tzouvala, “Aggression, Capitalism, and International Law: Missed Opportunities or Structural Constraints,” in Current Legal Problems. This article argues that the political economy of war should be of concern to international lawyers; that international law has been consistently unsuccessful and is currently singularly unambitious when it comes to naming, regulating, and sanctioning the political economy of war; and that the consistent failure of the field is partly due to the fact that armaments exist at the intersection of the logic of the state and the logic of the market, each of which have mystifying effects.
Kanad Bagchi, “Depoliticizing money: how the International Monetary Fund transformed central banking,” in the Journal of International Economic Law. This article argues that international law, especially the IMF, played a crucial role in the depoliticization of money in the 1970s and 1980s. Legal instruments of the Fund, including conditionality and surveillance, were operationalized to transpose “price stability” and “central bank independence” into the legal mandate of central banks worldwide. Once a distinctly political enterprise, central banking became a “technocratic” endeavour operating strictly under the paradigm of rationality and neutrality.
Ivana Isailovic, Usha Natarajan, Margarita Teresa Nieves Zárate & Pippi van Ommen, “Radical Imagining of ‘Just & Green’ Futures” in TWAILR: Extra. A series of reflections on what just futures after the ‘green transition’ would look like.
Aslı Bâli, “Weapons Against the Weak: International Law and the Political Economy of Coercion,” in the Yale Journal of International Law. This essay examines the contradictions intrinsic to an international legal order that purports to prohibit recourse to force while licensing economic coercion, and considers the implications of economic coercion in an increasingly multipolar geopolitical order. (Related LPE Blog post: Weapons Against the Weak)
“On international law and Gaza: critical reflections,” in the London Review of International Law. Forty-seven critical reflections on international law and Gaza.
Toni Marzal, “Conjuring markets: valuation in comparative international economic law,” in the Journal of International Economic Law. This article focuses on the neglected relationship between market valuation and international economic law by comparing valuation practices in four subfields: international investment law, the law of the European Convention of Human Rights, international tax law, and World Trade Organization law. The operation of each hinges, in crucial respects, on how the worth of a certain thing is determined by the market, but because the market is often either nonexistent or unreliable, the law must imagine how the market would have valued it.
Ivana Isailović, “Gender in Political Economy and EU Law: New Research Directions,” in Transnational Legal Theory. Part of a special issue on critical approaches to EU Law, this article explores how the gender in political economy approach (GPE) can illuminate the gendered understanding of markets stabilized through EU law and the distributive effects of the EU integration project along gender, class, race and ethnicity lines.
Paddy Ireland, Property in Contemporary Capitalism, with Bristol University Press. Challenging the conventional theories of property law that have shaped our understanding for centuries, this book explores the rise and growth of new intangible property forms; the nature of ‘investment’ and of property-as-capital; and the empirical realities of modern property. (Related LPE Blog post: Profiting from the Efforts of Others: Understanding Property-as-Capital.)
Ryan Martinez Mitchell, “Sino-American Sanctions Convergence?” in the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review. This article undertakes a detailed examination of the new Chinese sanctions framework, its historical origins, and its role in Beijing’s broader construction of what it calls “foreign-related rule of law,” and argues that China’s overall economic sanctions trajectory is best viewed less as countering U.S. practices than as an emulating them. (Related LPE Blog post: Economic Coercion in a Multipolar World.)
Andy Woodhouse, Commodity-form theory of law, the climate crisis, and the European Union, in Transnational Legal Theory. The essay combines the Marxist commodity-form theory of law with a Marxist analysis of the relationship between capitalism and nature, arguing that the inherent features of capitalism are the root cause of the climate crisis. Applying this to the European Union, the essay argues that its response to the climate crisis tends to reinforce the structural features of capitalism that have led us to the brink of catastrophic climate change.
Ding Yifan, “What is Driving the BRICS’ Debate on De-Dollarisation?” in Wenhua Zongheng. This article argues that from both historical and realist perspectives, it is in the interest of the BRICS countries to promote de-dollarisation.
Kate Yoon, “When the Sovereign Contracts: Troubling the Public/Private Distinction in International Law,” in the Yale Law Journal. Under current foreign sovereign immunity doctrine, sovereigns are not immune from suit when they engage in “private” acts, such as entering into contracts. This Note argues that the distinction between a state’s public and private acts is far less stable and clear-cut than it first appears. Many acts in which sovereigns engage are of a mixed nature. Choosing to see an act or transaction as essentially private or public often obscures other features that complicate that characterization.
Javier Solana and Marco Goldoni, “The legal nature of market neutrality in the euro area’s monetary policy,” in European Law Open. European Central Bank staff have repeatedly justified the carbon bias of the Asset Purchase Programme in terms of “market neutrality.” Yet this term is not included in the Treaties so its meaning and legal nature are unclear. To clarify the meaning of market neutrality in the euro area’s monetary policy, this article develops a summative content analysis of the textual data contained in relevant legal and policy documents that are publicly available.
Tricontinental Dossiers on “The Congolese Fight for Their Own Wealth,” “The Political Organisation of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST),” and “How Latin America Can Delink from Imperialism.”
Zohra Ahmed, “The Price of Consent,” in the Yale Journal of International Law. This article exposes how inequalities in the international economy and in international financial institutions facilitate the U.S.-led Global War on Terror. Using U.S.-Pakistan relations as a case study, it shows how the U.S. has deployed its powerful position at the International Monetary Fund to secure Pakistan’s consent for its military activities. (Related blog post: Towards a Law and Political Economy Approach to the Global War on Terror.)
Ruth Dukes and Eleanor Kirk, “Legal change and legal mobilisation: what does strategic litigation mean for workers and trade unions?” in Social and Legal Studies. This article addresses the question of what strategic litigation means for workers and trade unions. Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with union officials, lawyers with experience in representing them, and other actors from across the labour movement, it explores how U.K. trade unions and actors within them understand and experience strategic litigation and legal mobilisation, what they seek to achieve, and what has been effective and ineffective for them.
Dan W Puchniak, “The False Hope of Stewardship in the Context of Controlling Shareholders: Making Sense Out of the Global Transplant of a Legal Misfit” in The American Journal of Comparative Law. This Article undertakes the first in-depth global comparative analysis of the curious transplant of U.K.-style stewardship codes into jurisdictions dominated by controlling shareholders and examines the role that stewardship plays in these jurisdictions. It reveals that stewardship has been coopted by governments and institutional investors to serve their own diverse purposes.
Ntina Tzouvala, “Sanctions, Dollar Hegemony, and the Unraveling of Third World Sovereignty,” in the Yale Journal of International Law. Focusing on the role of dollar hegemony as an enabler of modern sanctions, this article uses the case of Afghanistan to document the far-reaching implications of central bank asset-freeze both on the material conditions on the ground in sanctioned countries but also on the edifice of international law, including the concept of state sovereignty. (Related LPE Blog post: Successful Failures: Economic Sanctions, Humanitarianism, and the Undoing of Post-Colonial Sovereignty)
Annette Schrauwen, “Essential, invisible, discriminated and exchangeable: labour migrants in the EU,” in Transnational Legal Theory. Drawing from Luca Mavelli’s concept of neoliberal citizenship, this article argues that both free movement law and EU immigration law are connected to a broader transformative framework of neoliberal political economy where rationalities of value exclude, dispose or sacrifice those with low economic or emotional value for receiving countries.
Sué Gonzales Hauck, “Locating the United Fruit Company in the History of International Law, ”in TWAILR: Reflections. This article offers a feminist perspective on the interplay of power dynamics between the state and corporations, focusing on the historical role of the United Fruit Company. By examining its connections to contemporary multinationals and state actors, the author underscores the corporation’s pivotal role in shaping international legal history and the strategies employed to challenge their influence on labor practices.
Mariana Pargendler, “Corporate Law in the Global South: Heterodox Stakeholderism,” in the Seattle University Law Review. This Article shows how Global South jurisdictions have pioneered heterodox stakeholder approaches in corporate law, such as the erosion of limited liability for purposes of stakeholder protection in Brazil and India, the adoption of mandatory corporate social responsibility in Indonesia and India, and the large-scale program of Black corporate ownership and empowerment in South Africa, among many others. (Related LPE Blog post: Heterodox Corporate Laws in the Global South.)
Kate Yoon, Doruk Erhan, and Chloe Miller, “On the Legality of Prosecuting State-Owned Enterprises: Halkbank v. United States,” in the Yale Journal of International Law. In Halkbank v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), the statutory framework governing foreign sovereign immunity under U.S. law, does not apply to criminal cases, nor does it extend to criminal prosecutions of state instrumentalities. This article argues that by contrast, under international law, states are absolutely immune from the criminal jurisdiction of other states, and that this immunity should extend on a case-by-case basis to state instrumentalities like state-owned enterprises.
Michael A. Wilkinson, “Constituent Power and the Material Constitution,” LSE Legal Studies Working Paper. What does the concept of constituent power look like through a materialist lens? This chapter proceeds by first elaborating Sieyes’s version of constituent power, which already highlights its material and its representative logic. In a second step, Marxist materialism is presented as exposing the gap between the material and the representative logic of liberal constitutionalism and offering its own material and representative logic of revolutionary socialism, which nevertheless remains unattained. Finally, we sketch a third step, when reference to constituent power and the material constitution operates as a juridical constraint, predominantly through Schmitt’s counter-revolutionary logic of constitutional identity.
Carmen G Gonzalez, “Racial Capitalism, Climate Change, and Ecocide” in the Wisconsin International Law Journal. This Article uses the framework of racial capitalism to examine and critique the proposed incorporation of ecocide in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Examining the processes through which racial capitalism plunders the land, labor, and natural wealth of states and peoples racialized as inferior to generate profits for global elites, it concludes that the proposed definition of ecocide may reinforce rather than subvert racial capitalism.
Ivana Isailović, “EU Abortion Law After Dobbs: States, the Market, and Stratified Reproductive Freedom,” in the The Columbia Journal of European Law. This paper maps out the ways in which the EU regulates abortion through economic and human rights frameworks and evaluates their effects on gender equality. (Related LPE Blog post: The Political Economy of Abortion Law in the EU.)
Petros Terzis, “Law and the political economy of AI production,” in the International Journal of Law and Information Technology. Reflecting on the role of law in consolidating the visions and logics of few multinationals in the global value chains of AI, this paper warns against the peril of regulating AI without looking at the methods and logistics of its material production. Following a detailed overview of the various (techno-)legal ways through which law enables the flow of materials, capital, and power from Global South to Global North, and from small players to lead firms, the paper concludes with some preliminary thoughts on a transformative agenda for the transnational regulation of infocomputational production.
Alaa Hajyahia, “A Tale of Two Cities and Universities: Comparative Reflections on the Repression of Palestine Solidarity,” in TWAILR: Reflections. This article reflects on the similarities and differences across interconnected sites of repression and resistance when it comes to Palestine solidarity on campuses in the United States and Israel.
Jonathan Bonnitcha, Zoe Phillips Williams, “The impact of investment treaties on domestic governance in developing countries,” in Law & Policy. This paper empirically examines the impact of investment treaties on domestic governance in developing countries, through cross-country quantitative analysis and a detailed qualitative case-study on Myanmar. Considering incentive, acculturative, and political economy mechanisms, the investigation finds little evidence that the treaties lead to changes in domestic law, institutional structure, or policy-making, and suggests that treaties place obligations on developing countries that cannot realistically be implemented.
Will Bateman, “Federalising Socialism without Doctrine,” in the Federal Law Review. This article argues that while the Australian Constitution’s mixture of ‘liberal’ elements and ‘socialist’ elements is common in modern advanced economies today, it was rare in the Anglophone constitutional tradition in 1901. Understanding the enduring impact of colonial socialism in Australian constitutionalism sheds light on how Australia’s distinctive political economy grew within a ‘Washminster’ system of government.
Matthias Goldmann, “The ambiguity of colonial international law: Three approaches to the Namibian Genocide” in the Leiden Journal of International Law. This article challenges Germany’s position that it is not under any legal obligation to pay reparations for the 1904–1907 Namibian Genocide.
William I. Robinson & Hoai-An Nguyen, “Gaza: A ghastly window into the crisis of global capitalism,” in Green Left. This article argues that the carnage in Gaza gives us a ghastly window into the rapidly escalating crisis of global capitalism. Global capitalism faces a structural crisis of overaccumulation and chronic stagnation. But the ruling groups also face a political crisis of state legitimacy, capitalist hegemony, and widespread social disintegration, an international crisis of geopolitical confrontation, and an ecological crisis of epochal proportions.
Cezary Błaszczyk, Eva Bernet Kempers, Laura Burgers, “Fenced Europe: A more-than-human perspective to border control. The case of Białowieża,” in European Law Open. This paper uses the Polish–Belarusian border as a case study of a conflict between human border policies and nonhuman interests. It argues that the plans for the Polish wall are illegal, politically unjust, and unethical, as it fails to account for the vulnerability of both humans and non-humans.
Shirin M. Rai, Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring, with Oxford University Press. Including case studies from different parts of the world, this book looks at the costs of care work in several forms: biological reproduction, unpaid work in the home, and cultural and ideological work necessary to maintain social relations beyond the household.
Agung Wardana, “Governing Through Courts? Law and the Political-Economy of Climate Change Litigation in Indonesia,” in VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee. This article examines three main cases representing climate litigation in Indonesia and argues that, in a country where the government pursues economic development based on a carbon-intensive economic growth model, climate litigation appears to be more challenging as it may pose a challenge to the existing political and economic model.
Petros Terzis, “Against Digital Constitutionalism,” in European Law Open. This Article explains the risks posed by Digital Constitutionalism to the field of Law and Technology. It does so by offering an alternative narration of the ‘problem of private power’ in the global political economy and by historicising the rise of digital corporations within the broader chronicle of the consolidation of power of transnational corporations in the global arena.
