From Integration Through Law to Global Community Law?

Abstract

Claims of “judicial overreach” currently disrupt the World Trade Organization (WTO), investor-state arbitration, and multilevel judicial governance in the European Union. Section II discusses the postwar evolution from the neo-liberal “Washington consensus” to the ordo-liberal “Geneva consensus” promoting global human rights, multilateral trading systems and transnational rule of law based on UN/WTO law. The neoliberal US assault on WTO law and adjudication (discussed in Section III) and China’s totalitarian state-capitalism (Section IV) challenge multilateral treaty systems and related adjudication protecting global public goods. The claims of “judicial overreach” in multilateral trade, investment and European adjudication (discussed in Section V) reveal systemic conflicts among regulatory and judicial approaches. Section VI concludes that EU law requires defending the “constitutional functions” of ordo-liberal integration law through EU leadership for plurilateral WTO reforms; economic, environmental, and human rights litigation in Europe confirm the need for participatory governance in multilevel legal and judicial protection of the UN/WTO sustainable development goals.