Global Justice and International Economic Law
Three Takes

This book uses three approaches to examine the different ways to conceptualize the problem of global justice and its relationship to trade law.

Frank J. Garcia (Author)

9781107031920, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 April 2013

362 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.65 kg

"Global justice is not just an optional extra for economic globalization. It is the very measure by which globalization’s success is gauged and its failures condemned. Or at least it should be. By meticulously examining the various ways we think about global justice Frank Garcia’s enlightening and elegant arguments show that too often the concept is ignored or its meaning twisted, when it desperately needs to be better understood and invoked if the benefits of the global economy are to be fairly exploited and its injustices minimized."
--David Kinley, Chair in Human Rights Law, The University of Sydney

For centuries, international trade has been seen as essential to the wealth and power of nations. More recently we have started to understand its problematic role as an engine of distributive justice. In this compelling book Frank J. Garcia proposes a new way to evaluate, construct and manage international trade - one that is based on norms of economic justice, comparative advantage and national interest. Garcia examines three ways to conceptualize the problem of trade and global justice, drawn from Rawlsian liberalism, communitarianism and consent theory. These approaches illustrate specific issues of importance to the way global justice has been theorized, offering a pluralistic mode of arguing for global justice and highlighting the unique modes of discourse we employ when engaging with global justice and their implications for conceptualizing and arguing the problem. Garcia suggests a new direction for trade agreements built around truly consensual trade negotiations and the kind of international economic system they would structure.

1. International justice, or global justice as the foreign policy of liberal states
2. Globalization and the possibility of a global community of justice
3. Global justice as consensual exchange: consent, oppression, and the nature of trade itself.

Subject Areas: Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB], Law [L]