Failure to thrive: Backlashes against International Trade Law

Abstract

Panel title: The Backlash Moment in International Law, 27/02/21 7.00pm-8.45pm

This panel critically examines the current backlash moment to theorize the recent past and possible future of international law. In the wake of decades of neoconservative foreign policy and neoliberal economic policy, a populist backlash has emerged opposing not only global governance conceptions of international law but key pillars of the UN Charter's 'liberal' regime of sovereign equality and collective security. These currents can be traced to contradictions internal to the normative structure of international law itself and the dramatic shift in understandings of sovereignty under conditions of technological globalization. Panelists will explore how these phenomena challenge and elude the conceptual parameters of established theories of international law and examine the paradoxes key to reimagining the international legal order.