The World Crisis and International Law
The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future

A hard look at the challenges to the authority and roles of international legal institutions since the 1990s.

Paul B. Stephan (Author)

9781009320979, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 February 2023

296 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.57 kg

'We hear a lot today about threats to the liberal world order. In this timely book, a leading American scholar of international law offers an incisive and original account of that order-including how it developed, what sustained it, and why it is unraveling. Drawing together a wide range of examples, Stephan lays out what it will take to restore the international consensus needed to confront global challenges of the future.' Matthew Waxman , Columbia Law School

The knowledge economy, a seeming wonder for the world, has caused unintended harms that threaten peace and prosperity and undo international cooperation and the international rule of law. The world faces threats of war, pandemics, growing domestic political discord, climate change, disruption of international trade and investment, immigration, and the pollution of cyberspace, just as international law increasingly falls short as a tool for managing these challenges. Prosperity dependent on meritocracy, open borders, international economic freedom, and a wide-open Internet has met its limits, with international law one of the first casualties. Any effective response to these threats must reflect the pathway by which these perils arrive. Part of the answer to these challenges, Paul B. Stephan argues, must include a re-conception of international law as arising out of pragmatic and limited experiments by states, rather than as grand projects to remake and redeem the world.

1. The crisis arrives
Part I. The Rise and Fall of Liberal Internationalism and the New World Order: 2. The end of communism and the embrace of the Washington Consensus (1989–2000, Part I)
3. New international organizations and their ambitions (1989–2000, Part II)
4. Cracks in the foundation and system shocks: terror, the great recession, and the Arab Spring (2000–15)
5. Crises come in waves: national populism, the poisoning of cyberspace, a new cold war, and the pandemic (2015–21)
Part II. The Knowledge Economy: World Conquest and Creative Destruction: 6. Knowledge, technological innovation, and wealth
7. Law and the knowledge economy: what the winners want
8. Losing and location in the knowledge economy: the view from the Hinterlands and the Chinese alternative: Part III. Battlegrounds: 9. International security, cyber disruption, and human rights
10. Immigration
11. Trade and investment
12. The treason of the clerks: judicial revolts against international law
Part IV. International Law Futures: 13. Dancing along the precipice
14. What may endure
15. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB]