The Crisis of Multilateral Legal Order. Causes, Dynamics and Implications

Abstract

Multilateralism has served as a foundation for international cooperation over the past several decades. Championed after the Second World War by the United States and Western Europe, it expanded into a broader global system of governance with the end of the Cold War. Lately, an increasing number of States appear to be disappointed with the existing multilateral arrangements, both at the level of norms and that of institutions. The great powers see unilateral and bilateral strategies, which maximize their political leverage rather than diluting it in multilateral fora, as more effective ways for controlling the course of international affairs.

The signs of the crisis have been visible for some time – but recent crises indicate an acceleration of the on-going disintegration of the multilateral system, such as Brexit, growing resistance on the part of States to international monitoring of compliance and the radical change in the US foreign policy during the presidency of Donald Trump which saw the US withdraw from several multilateral agreements (e.g. the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Agreement), leave some international organizations or bodies (e.g. the United Nations Human Rights Council or the World Health Organization) or paralyze some others (e.g. the World Trade Organization (WTO)).

Tackling the debate surrounding the crisis of multilateralism and the related transformation of the underlying international legal order, The Crisis of Multilateral Legal Order analyzes selected aspects of the current crisis from the perspective of public international law to identify the nature of the crisis, its dynamics, and implications.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction Mapping the crisis of multilateralism By Paolo D Farah, Lukasz Gruszczynski, Marcin J Menkes, Veronika Bílková Part I Conceptualizing the crisis Chapter 2 The Crisis of Trust in Contemporary Multilateralism International Order in Times of Perplexity By Oleksandr Vodiannikov Chapter 3 Believing Is Seeing Normative Consensus and the Crisis of Institutional Multilateralism By Sean Butler Chapter 4 Revisiting the ‘Crisis’ of International Law By Maria Varaki Chapter 5 The Multilateral International Order – Reports of Its Death Are Greatly Exaggerated By Mary E. Footer Part II Dynamics and implications of the crisis Chapter 6 State Withdrawals of Jurisdiction from an International Adjudicative Body By Christopher Lentz Chapter 7 Multilateralism, Community of Interests, and Environmental Law By Malgosia Fitzmaurice Chapter 8 The Advent and Fall of Trust as a Cornerstone of Judicial Cooperation in Multilateral Regimes in Europe: A Cautionary Tale By Vassilis Pergantis Chapter 9 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime at 50 A Midlife Crisis and its Consequences By Agnieszka Nimark Chapter 10 The Crisis of Multilateralism Through the Prism of the Experience of the International Criminal Court By Patrycja Grzebyk, Karolina Wierczyńska Chapter 11 Global Governance Crises and Rule of Law Lessons from Europe's Multilevel Constitutionalism By Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann Chapter 12 We Have Never Been ‘Multilateral’ Consensus Discourse in International Trade Law By Jessica C Lawrence Chapter 13 The EU's Reform of the Investor-State Dispute Resolution System A Bilateral Path towards a Multilateral Solution By Ewa Żelazna Chapter 14 Challenges to Multilateralism at the World Health Organization By Margherita Melillo Chapter 15 The Council of Europe and Russia Emerging from a Crisis or Heading Towards a New One? By Szymon Zaręba Chapter 16 Conclusion By Paolo Davide Farah, Marcin J Menkes, Lukasz Gruszczynski, Veronika Bílková.

Keywords: Globalization, Multilateralism, World Trade Organization, International Cooperation, Crisis, Trust, Community of Interest, Global Governance, United Nations Human Rights Council, World Health Organization, Environmental Law, Nuclear Non-Proliferation