Chapter 10 examines the law of arms control relating to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and its relationship to the jus ad bellum.

Anger and dismay associated with the massive corruption and abuse of foreign jurisdictions, as safe havens for illicit spoils belonging to political leaders and their associates – particularly in oil-rich countries where political elites latch onto natural resources as a source of power, foreign influence, and illicit enrichment – have shaped the landscape of international relations over the past decades. They have grown in tandem with rising inequality, conflict, and human rights violations, refocusing the attention of the international community onto dictatorial-style kleptocracies where these problems have become most prominent. In a bid to amass, retain, and grow their influence, kleptocrats encircle themselves with “yes men” – enthusiastic professional middlemen aiding them in the accumulation of illicit fortunes, such as by laundering millions of dollars through the international financial system. With these destructive processes the impunity of kleptocratic elites grows and the misrule of law contaminates other states and the international community as a whole.

This chapter details the basic structure of sanctions and export control regimes, and describes the sanctions programs that were in place or developed within the last ten years. It briefly discusses the most comprehensive sanctions regimes, including those imposed by the U.S. against Iran, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea. This section focuses in particular on the structure of sanctions regulations before 2022 applicable to Russia. These sanctions were more limited in nature, but were enacted with increasing frequency and scope in the immediate years before the invasion, responding to a growing list of threats from within Russia related to cyber attacks, interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea.

The chapter summarizes the ideas put forward in this book. It details how justice under the WTO Agreement is transformative as opposed to either purely distributive or corrective. At the same time, that justice must be understood on its own terms and is not for that reason entirely unjust. The chapter also examines the possibility of a communitarian theory serving as a general theory of law. It explains a considerable amount in a way that is naturally coherent and fruitful and offers several predictions and prescriptions about the future of WTO law. At the same time, the chapter acknowledges how a communitarian theory is itself incomplete. This is due to abduction, which stresses the tentative, open-ended nature of current knowledge. Presentism suggests there is a danger in thinking about obligations and rights of countries only in the current moment and not in the broader sense of obligations owed to future generations, and beyond that, the environment we live in.

In this chapter, Maria Gwynn focuses on the settlement of water-related disputes in international law. This chapter evaluates agreements governing transboundary water resources from different regions of the world and highlights the different mechanisms of dispute settlement they provide. It argues that, for water-related disputes, joint or international commissions play a key role in the settlement of disputes. This chapter explores how the complementarity of different treaties, on the one hand, and international law, on the other, coupled with States’ willingness to co-operate with one another, enables States to negotiate and resolve disputes amicably and according to the principles contained in the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention.

In this chapter, Aris Georgopoulos and Petros Mavroidis examine the contribution of the WTO dispute settlement body to the resolution of trade disputes. This chapter documents the problems and challenges faced by the WTO’s dispute settlement body and reveals their debilitating impact on its work. This chapter then puts forward concrete proposals for the establishment of a new WTO Court and explains why such a course of action has a realistic chance of breaking the current impasse and creating an effective dispute settlement body for trade disputes.

This chapter focuses on the debates about development, human rights, and ‘basic needs’ that defined much of the push to craft a decolonized international law during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In particular, it considers the emergence of the international right to development, and the relation between international human rights and poverty-reduction strategies like the ‘basic needs’ approach in New International Economic Order-related discussions, against the background of the rise of neoliberalism and organized human rights movements during the 1970s and early 1980s. It does so partly through a close reading of the two reports produced by the ‘North-South Commission’ chaired by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Despite its overarching commitment to a renewed form of ‘global Keynesianism’, the Brandt Commission expounded a broadly rights-friendly approach to development that absorbed many of the neoliberal assumptions then on the rise. When US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dismissed the Brandt Commission’s recommendations at the ‘North-South Summit’, held in Cancún in October 1981, the moment signalled the end of the struggle to cultivate an international law of development that would live up to the ideal of an international law of decolonization.

In this chapter, Tarcisio Gazzini and Alessandra Pietrobon focus on parallel proceedings in investment and human rights claims. This chapter examines how tribunals co-ordinate the exercise of their jurisdictions, how they should deal with the merits (including applicable law and issues of interpretation), and how they should avoid double recovery. The complex disputes related to Yukos are discussed with a view to formulating some tentative recommendations on how to manage parallel proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights and investment arbitral tribunals.

Time is an active element in a communitarian theory of WTO law. Across the passage of time, the idea-complexes of obligations and rights identified in previous chapters interact, bringing about law in a third overarching idea-complex. This chapter examines how this third idea-complex takes the form of a sui generis legal system generating transformative justice. Here the law focuses on the present and is reasoned abductively according to the best inference consistent with current knowledge. Notwithstanding this reconciliation, the transformations required and induced by it are profound. They demand that actors pay attention to interests other than their own. They also demand that actors conceive of and conform their behavior in light of that transformed interest. In WTO law this interest co-exists uneasily with the sovereignty of states so that there is a persistent tension between individual member interests and the collective interest of the membership. Outcomes of WTO disputes often manifest this basic tension.

Chapter Five delves into fuel switching in the context of market and law reform in China’s gas sector. With the objective of increasing natural gas supply and consumption, the reform of the gas sector in China has taken a significant step forward since December 2019, with the establishment of an independent pipeline operator (i.e. PipeChina) and the promulgation of essential regulations on tariffs and third-party access. This chapter discusses the overall regulatory governance of China’s gas sector, assessing the extent to which market reform and newly promulgated regulations can drive the desired outcomes of increasing natural gas supply and consumption to accelerate fuel switching.