The globalization processes of recent decades have drawn legal, political, and philosophical attention to the question of global economic justice. While much discussion of global justice has focused on whether or not the principles of domestic distributive justice should apply on a global scale, lesser attention has been paid to issues concerning the justice of the global legal and political institutions through which the production and distribution of economic goods and benefits are institutionalized. There is a growing need to address questions as to how the global legal and institutional order itself should be constituted, and most fundamentally, how relations of power and conflict should be institutionally structured to develop the conditions necessary for the emergence of just and fair economic relationships across the globe. This book fills this gap by offering a substantial interdisciplinary examination of the normative and policy underpinnings of the international economic order.

For many years, international legal scholarship’s engagement with the complex structures of international treaties and intergovernmental organizations has shown a general tendency to uncritically focus on economic gains and benefits of trade and investment liberalization. Less attention has been paid to alternative ways of understanding the roles and structures of global economic and legal institutions. As one speaker remarked at a recent conference on international investment law, injustices and inequities were not the matter of legal analysis and ought to be left to philosophers. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this edited volume bridges this long-standing gap between international economic law and theories of justice, heralding a long awaited shift away from the purely positivist legal approaches which previously dominated international economic law scholarship.

In furthering our understanding of a just and fair ordering of global economic governance, this book accomplishes at least three objectives. First, by supplementing traditional legal and economic approaches to understanding global economic governance, the book enhances the conceptual tools with which to evaluate and critique international economic law and institutions. Second, by helping answer questions about what states and public officials should do in negotiating investment and trade agreements, the book offers practical guidance on legal and economic institutional design. And third, while taking a positive view of economics and firmly maintaining the liberal tradition, the book teaches about how one can go about the task of justifying global and international economic institutions and law.

The only omission that leaves the reader of this volume wanting more is the lack of discussion of global justice issues arising in the context of international investment law. Nevertheless, by offering an extensive interdisciplinary analysis of other international economic law disciplines—including WTO law and international monetary law, this book offers much food for thought and is therefore recommended not only to political scientists and philosophers, but also most importantly to scholars and practitioners of international economic law.