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"Introduction" [2013] ELECD 1012; in Linarelli, John (ed), "Research Handbook on Global Justice and International Economic Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) x

Book Title: Research Handbook on Global Justice and International Economic Law

Editor(s): Linarelli, John

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848449664

Section Title: Introduction

Number of pages: 5

Extract:

Introduction
John Linarelli



Every year, the United States Department of State publishes a list of
treaties and international agreements to which the United States is a
party. The most recent publication is 489 pages in length.1 These are the
treaties and international agreements entered into by one state, albeit a
powerful one, with another state or group of states. The list ranges from
multilateral treaties of enormous significance, such as the United Nations
Charter and the World Trade Organization Agreements, to bilateral
treaties of limited scope. The list obviously increases if the exercise is
extended beyond the United States. Many of these treaties have to
do with economic relations and international trade. Historian Eric
Hobsbawm tells us "the major fact about the nineteenth century is the
creation of a single global economy, progressively reaching into the most
remote corners of the world, an increasingly dense web of economic
transactions, communications and movements of goods, money and
people linking the developed countries with each other and with the
underdeveloped world."2 Globalisation persists into the 21st century, but
with a pervasive multilateral institutional architecture added to an ever
more intricate bilateral and regional one. This architecture includes
hundreds of nongovernmental organisations with real power over global
governance. While the most sophisticated and developed of these insti-
tutions are still at the level of the state,3 the sovereignty of states is ever
becoming a quaint and outdated idea. Every international lawyer knows
that state sovereignty is massively eroded by the " ...