International Corporate Constituency as a Human Problem

Abstract

This article sets out a high-level framing of constituency in relation to international corporate persons (ICPs) as a Jessupian ‘human problem’. It then draws from examples in international trade law and international investment law to demonstrate the transformative power of ICP interests in the making of contemporary international economic law (IEL). From there, it analyzes the logic of the terms used by IEL’s economist and lawyer architects and suggests these logics enabled a corporate constituency that separates the interests of the law from the interests of humans, both as subjects of law and as sources of institutional legitimacy, accelerating during and after the 1970s. In the process, it shows that at least one ‘human problem’ with IEL’s corporate constituency is that it is legally insulated from human problems and explores solutions.