Introduction: Preventing Trade, Investment, Energy, and Climate Conflicts through Rule of Law?

Abstract

Abstract This Introduction summarizes the content and conclusions of the following chapters on the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development; the regulatory failures of the United Nations (UN) and World Trade Organization (WTO) systems to protect the seventeen agreed sustainable development objectives effectively for the benefit of all citizens and their human rights; and the disintegration of the world trading system caused by the mercantilist power politics of the US Trump administration, by China’s authoritarian state capitalism, geopolitical rivalries, and trade wars. The ordo-liberal economic constitutionalism and multilevel governance of public goods in Europe have responded more effectively to market failures, governance failures, and related constitutional failures. Chapters 6–9 offer detailed case studies of how the WTO dispute settlement jurisprudence, investment law, and adjudication, constitutional, human rights, and environmental litigation have contributed to protecting transnational rule of law and other Sustainable Development Goals. Europe’s economic constitutionalism is rejected by Anglo-Saxon neo-liberalism and by China’s authoritarian state capitalism; as also many third-world economies and regional economic orders (like the China-led Belt and Road networks) reveal increasing heterogeneity, the US-led neo-liberal world order risks disintegrating. UN and WTO law and democratic alliances must promote private–public network governance and civil society participation in order to stabilize and depoliticize multilevel governance of global public goods.