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Toward A Political Theory For Private International Law, John Linarelli Jan 2016

Toward A Political Theory For Private International Law, John Linarelli

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Private international law presents a dilemma for legal and political philosophy. Legal and political philosophers have ignored private international law, with only a few scattered attempts to evaluate its claims. Private international law offers a powerful set of counterexamples that put into serious doubt attempts to link law’s authority only or primarily to relationships between states and citizens. No society, state, or other practice-mediated relationship can serve as grounds for the authority of private international law to persons to whom it applies but who are outside of such relationships. Private international law affects the normative situations of persons entirely outside …

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Concept And Contract In The Future Of International Law, John Linarelli Jan 2015

Concept And Contract In The Future Of International Law, John Linarelli

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This is an article written for a symposium on Joel Trachtman’s book, The Future of International Law. I first deal with the contractarian features of Trachtman’s approach to understanding international law. Using the tools of new institutional economics and constitutional economics, Trachtman seeks to describe the features of an international legal system. This is positive political theory or at least relates substantially to the methods of positive political theory. I explore a different approach, one connecting to normative political theory. In its ambitious sense, my approach would see international law as a form of moral argument, but in its modest …

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Redesigning Global Trade Institutions, John Linarelli Jan 2011

Redesigning Global Trade Institutions, John Linarelli

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This is a draft of an essay for the symposium, 2021: International Law Ten Years from Now, held by the Southwestern Journal of International Law in cooperation with the International Law Association (American Branch) Weekend West. The essay deals with two questions. First, what is to be of the WTO and world trade institutions generally? It examines the rise of regionalism in international trade agreements and possible roles for variable geometry for the WTO. The essay critiques proposals to move towards (or back to) plurilateralism for the WTO. Second, what should trade agreements do? This question goes to the core …

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When Does Might Make Right? Using Force For Regime Change, John Linarelli Jan 2009

When Does Might Make Right? Using Force For Regime Change, John Linarelli

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Should states use force to bring about regime change? International law recognizes no such grounds. This paper seeks to provide guidance from moral theory. The aim of this paper is to identify the moral grounds for the use of armed force by one state or a group of states, against another state, when the intention of the intervening states is to achieve a fundamental change in the character of the political and legal institutions of the other state. Lawyers tend to place the argument for regime change intervention within putative humanitarian intervention doctrines. The moral justification for humanitarian intervention is …

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What Do We Owe Each Other In The Global Economic Order?: Constructivist And Contractualist Accounts, John Linarelli Jan 2006

What Do We Owe Each Other In The Global Economic Order?: Constructivist And Contractualist Accounts, John Linarelli

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No legal system deserving of continued support can exist without an adequate theory of justice. A world trade constitution cannot credibly exist without a clear notion of justice upon which to base a consensus. This paper examines two accounts of fairness found in moral philosophy, those of John Rawls and Tim Scanlon. The Rawlsian theory of justice is well-known to legal scholars. Scanlon's contractualist account may be less well-known. The aim of the paper is to start the discussion as to how fairness theories can be used to develop the tools for examining international economic policies and institutions. After elaborating …

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Principles Of Fairness For International Economic Treaties: Constructivism And Contractualism, John Linarelli Jan 2006