This Article argues that international tax law has developed the characteristics of an asymmetric regime complex; contests over its normative content are playing out simultaneously in the OECD and in the UN. The OECD provides technical rulemaking capacity, while the UN serves to address claims about legitimacy and equity. Powerful states—especially China and the United States—have been exploiting the overlap between the two institutional arenas to try to press their competing visions for domestic and international tax governance.

Lord Asquith’s 1951 award in the Abu Dhabi arbitration is widely recalled as one of the first reasoned international decisions to apply the “General Principles of Law Recognized by Civilized Nations” to a dispute between a state and a private investor. The award is also widely reviled. Asquith is said to be a racist, and the award an embarrassment, and no other application of general principles has done more to delegitimize the concept. This Article draws on extensive archival research to show that the case exemplifies the ways in which international lawyers act as legal entrepreneurs, investing in the (re)creation of international legal precedent.

The most-favored-nation obligation, as an expression of a non-discrimination norm, is often described as fundamental for international trade law. But does MFN deserve this normative halo? This Article traces the historical emergence of MFN-as-fundamental mythology, unearthing its origin in three controversial twentieth-century projects. Rather than promoting non-discrimination, MFN was historically used to draw discriminatory boundaries—between imperial powers and colonies and between West and East. Only with the ordoliberal turn did MFN become synonymous with a universalist, non-discrimination-centric international trade law. But history also reminds that alternative norms once vied to structure international trade law. Those may be due for reconsideration.

A key finding to emerge from the ongoing work of the special rapporteur of the International Law Commission (ILC or Commission) on subsidiary means for the determination of rules of international law1 concerns the systemic lack of diversity in the use of teachings.2 This finding carries important implications for the legitimacy of using subsidiary means, particularly regarding whose voices are privileged or silenced in legal determination.3 The special rapporteur noted that international courts such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had used teachings from a remarkably narrow cohort of predominantly Western, male voices from elite institutions—perspectives that inevitably reflect a limited range of viewpoints and cultural contexts.