Borders are ubiquitous. As invisible lines, they contribute to a functioning world order and guarantee security for the people. In the form of walls and fences, they divide society and establish strongholds of prosperity that are not accessible to everyone. A similar effect can be observed in connection with the concept of citizenship, which binds people fatefully to a particular territory and thus significantly determines an individual’s life chances. This article shows how borders and their protection as well as the concept of citizenship challenge fundamental ideas of justice and traces discourses that seek to evolve the current border and citizenship regimes into a more universal and just form of human coexistence.

Critiques of international economic law have attacked the tendency of transnational legal processes, including investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), to undermine states' sovereignty. In response to these criticisms, many states have limited the power of investment tribunals by reasserting their sovereignty. There are reasons, however, to be critical of endorsing sovereignty, particularly in the context of global distributive inequalities. This is because assertions of sovereignty are normatively ambivalent in their effects: they can be used to entrench and naturalize the unequal assets held by each state, rather than to empower states to exercise their right to regulate. These potential tensions can be resolved if sovereignty is understood as a term that is used in many different ways. Critics of ISDS often conflate two distinct meanings of sovereignty: sovereignty understood as the right to be free from external influence, and sovereignty understood as states' right to regulate. Because states are constrained by differences in resources and capacity, withdrawing from ISDS cannot always secure the conditions for effective domestic regulation. Sovereignty understood as the right to be free from interference may even stand in the way of states' ability to regulate, by allowing states to gatekeep resources that were accumulated through historical injustice

Since US President Donald J. Trump took office in January 2017, the future of the global economy has looked distinctly uncertain. This is not because a process of clear and purposeful change can be said to be underway. Instead, it is because of a pattern of piecemeal, inconsistent and contradictory fragments of policy, both domestic and international in orientation, in the arenas of trade, taxation, business relations, finance and banking, social and welfare provision, immigration, and environmental protection, whose cumulative significance remains unclear. The modest task of this essay is therefore to sketch the contours, patterns, inconsistencies and confusions presented by the Trump administration's approach to shaping the US economy and, by extension, the global economic order, and on that basis to offer an interpretation of its emerging implications for inequality both within the United States and across the world.

Response to the Ebola crisis (ongoing event) has been less than efficient. It has been monitored less than adequately by the international community and has been coordinated poorly in the USA. The event is used as a platform to examine deficiencies in public health infrastructure, the limits of its political and financial support, and how political outcomes can be affected. The need to tease out the political determinants implicit in policy failure and disaster management is argued in this Editorial. Failures mentioned include in the Balkans and in Greece with ongoing austerity. Comments on the real heroes of Ebola on the ground in Africa and the need for a charismatic role for political leaders in public health are also included.

Levett J. Disastrous Events and Political Failures. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2015;30(3):12.