International corporate constituency as a human problem

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article frames constituency in relation to international corporate persons (ICPs) as a Jessupian ‘human problem’, constructively and politically. Drawing from examples in international trade law and international investment law it demonstrates the transformative power of ICP interests in the making of contemporary international economic law (IEL). It then analyses the logics of the economic and legal thinkers who facilitate this power in IEL 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. In the process, it shows that at least one ‘human problem’ with IEL’s corporate constituency—and by extension IEL itself—is that it is based on domestic market wisdoms projected internationally. By failing to account for the political and legal influence of the most significant transnational market participants, IEL is structurally insulated from human problems.