On 24 October 1945, when the UN Charter entered into force, an estimated 750 million people, nearly a third of the world’s population, lived in territories under direct or indirect foreign rule. By the end of 1990, thirty years after it adopted the landmark Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and established a special committee to oversee the process of decolonization,1 this number had cratered to a few million and the UN General Assembly felt enough pride in its track record to celebrate the inception of an ‘International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism’.2 Today, roughly 70 per cent of the world’s population is descended from colonizers or colonial subjects, in many cases from both.3 The experiences of countless occupied territories, oppressed nations, unrecognized states, secessionist movements, and Indigenous peoples, to say nothing of those struggling against ongoing neocolonialism, make it clear that colonialism has not come to an end – and that it certainly cannot be reduced to the formal processes of decolonization coordinated by states and international organizations. But the fact remains that over eighty states gained their independence within a single generation after the Second World War, with most colonial territories thereby reconstituted as states possessed of de jure sovereignty. Fewer than two million now live in the seventeen territories that continue to be designated as ‘non-self-governing’ on the United Nations’ admittedly incomplete and controversial list.4

The communitarian theory of WTO law outlined in previous chapters works reasonably well as a description of key features of WTO law. Its “fit” with the existing law raises the possibility of the theory serving wider applications. That possibility is likely to be canvassed most insistently in relation to international investment law, the body of law pertaining to the protection and treatment of foreign investment by host states. A communitarian theory would forecast international investment law to be preoccupied with corrective justice and to be heavily contractual, retrospective and inductive. The chapter demonstrates how all of these features are confirmed in the shape of contemporary international investment law, and how in light of considerable dissatisfaction with the current investment regime, an impulse is detected toward something more egalitarian, and therefore more obligatory, constitutive, prospective and presumptive.

Chapter 14 examines the relationship between the law governing the use of force (jus ad bellum) and the law of armed conflict (jus in bello), including the law of neutrality. It also looks at how these branches of the law also relate to international human rights law.

Chapter 7 examines the legality of humanitarian intervention and the extent to which certain interventions might qualify as being excused despite the lack of a legal basis.

This chapter focuses in particular on import restrictions and export controls as weapons of economic warfare as used against Russia, as opposed to the sanctions measures that are the focus of much of the book. These tools supplement the sanctions measures and help promote the same foreign policy ends through alternative means. For example, the chapter examines changes to Russia’s “most favored nation” status, and the resulting effect on imports into the U.S. from Russia. Import bans were also implemented on many items from Russia in multiple jurisdictions. Export controls of high-tech items are also discussed.

Whether tacked onto a bumper sticker, T-shirt, comic strip, or witty cartoon, humor offers laconic, entertaining, and simple snapshots of the issues and problems that plague societies. The text of the cartoon in the epigraph presents a humorous take on the main topic of the book, distilling a larger conversation on the limits of justice mechanisms and crimes of government officials into a monochromatic depiction of a serene chat between a father and his son. Contemplating the prospects of different career paths, the boy announces his budding interest in organized crime to his dad. Straight-faced and without missing a beat, his father responds, “Government or private sector?,” which draws on a long-standing perception that associates the incriminating behavior of government officials and private sector executives with unchecked impunity. A spin-off of the original cartoon emphasizes the latter, with the father recommending, “I personally would suggest government for you, my son. They never go to jail.”

Chapter One discusses China’s carbon neutrality objective and the essential strategies to achieve this long-term climate goal. The strategies focus on decarbonising China’s power sector, enabling fuel switch from coal to natural gas, electrifying end-use such as transport and industry, and adopting carbon removal mechanisms. Implementing these strategies will depend on China’s energy legal and regulatory systems. This chapter introduces the research context and structure of the book, highlighting its contribution to academia and practice. The chapters of the book are arranged based on the four essential strategies and pathways to achieve China’s carbon neutrality target, providing legal details concerning the development of China’s energy legal and regulatory systems.

In this chapter, Rossana Deplano focuses on the peaceful settlement of outer space disputes. This chapter argues that, traditionally, States have resorted to diplomatic, as opposed to legal, means for the settlement of disputes related to space activities. However, with the growing privatisation and commercialisation of space activities, this chapter avers that the current treaty framework for the settlement of space disputes is inadequate to cope with the demands of the new space industry. This chapter examines the principles governing the treaty framework for the peaceful settlement of space disputes as well as the existent dispute settlement mechanisms. It evaluates whether the apparently unstructured character of the UN treaty framework for dispute settlement is sufficient to deal with traditional and emerging space disputes, such as those likely to stem from space-mining operations. The argument is made that, although there is no all-encompassing and binding dispute settlement process, a specialised dispute settlement system endowed with enforcement powers is not desirable.