When reviewing the Handbook of International Law (Aust, 2010) for this journal (RR 2011/065), I noted that, when I originally studied international relations, considerably more than half a century ago, our recommended textbook for international law was the fourth edition of Schwarzenberger’s Manual of International Law (1960). I went to the trouble of digging out a copy of that edition, and was disappointed to find that, though the international political situation had changed out of all recognition since the early 1960s, remarkably little had changed in the nuts and bolts of international law. The books have got larger: Aust’s 595 pages as against Schwarzenberger’s 440 pages in a smaller format with wider margins and larger print, but this is all part of the usual expansion of the reference literature (Guha, 2017). Though the independent nation state is decreasingly relevant in economic terms, it is still hanging on to its legal supremacy.
The one exception to this slight air of stagnation is international economic law. Nations have become so much more economically interdependent in the past half-century and international trading corporations have become so much more powerful that the law has had to change, though slowly and inadequately. In particular, the FANGs – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google – have sprung up, unregulated, as if from nowhere, to become much richer and more powerful than most nation states.
International economic law, as this book points out, is “an extremely broad set of rules, principles, norms and practices carried out by a remarkably extensive set of diverse actors and applying to a very wide and diverse set of human activities”. Getting all these together into one coherent book has obviously been a massive effort, calling on two editors, three assistant editors, one language editor and a genuinely international cast of around 200 expert contributors. I must admit that I was disappointed not to see any of my old international relations class among the contributors, but I suppose we are all far too emeritus by now to have kept up with all the changes that have taken place or, like me, have drifted off into other fields.
This book is divided into four main parts, each of them intricately subdivided into sections, subsections and chapters. The first part covers the basic foundations of the topic: the subject matter, its relationships with other forms of law, a too-brief historical perspective, sources – courts, treaties etc., international bodies – the WTO, IMF, World Bank, G7, etc. The second part deals with principles: non-discrimination, “most favoured nation” agreements, transparency, protecting domestic policy, dispute settlement – the International Court of Justice, London Court of International Arbitration etc., and economic sanctions. The third part covers the main regulatory areas: market access, domestic regulations, trade in services, government procurement, labour mobility and property protection. The fourth part is called Cross-Cutting Challenges and covers the difficult topics of integrating domestic and international economic law, and the interrelationships between international economic law and poverty, sustainability and human rights.
There are a considerable number of books and other reference sources on international economic law. In fact, both Routledge and Oxford University Press have entire book series focussed on the topic: the Routledge Research in Economic Law and the Oxford University Press International Economic Law Series. Among these books, I would particularly note the recent Principles of International Economic Law (Herdegen, 2016) as a lucid summary. However, I do not know of any reference source that brings such a vast mass of thoroughly referenced, detailed information together into one place as this book does. The problem, as always in such a rapidly changing scene, is that of keeping up to date. This book has inevitably had a lengthy gestation period. There is no indication here of Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement and to undermine the WTO, or of the bizarre decision of the English voters to withdraw the UK from the European Union, nor of the gradual revelation of the extent to which inadequately regulated international corporations such as Google and Facebook have facilitated interference with due political processes – there is surely a need for an extra chapter in Cross-Cutting Challenges there.
International legal problems have become so pervasive that all lawyers, even those specialising in domestic problems, need to be aware of information sources on the topic. Economic law is of major importance to all of us, but it is such a dry and tedious subject of study that I doubt that many public reference libraries will face a demand for this (though they may wish to bear it in mind) but I would warmly recommend this excellent reference book to all major law libraries and to all academic libraries dealing with topics like international relations, politics, economics or law. They should remember, however, that keeping up to date in this field is not cheap.
