Prof Anne Peters (Director, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) gave a talk on 'Global Constitutionalism: The Social Dimension' for the Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law.
Abstract:
Hyper-globalisation and global supply chains have exacerbated and globalised the social question and have
thus raised new types of critique and brought new expectations to
international law. But it is argued that our post-2015 international
legal order has responded by forming an overall ‘more social’
international law. The important interim finding is that this new body
of law is characterized by its cross-border social responsibility for
individuals. It is submitted that this ‘more social’ and
individual-focused international law
can be well understood and developed further within a framework of
global constitutionalism. The most important reason for absorbing the
social question is to mitigate the neo-liberal tilt of global
constitutionalism. Only the full integration of the social question,
understood as a global question, into the programme of global
constitutionalism will be able to rescue that programme from becoming
reduced to a much-loathed ‘new constitutionalism’, denounced as a
political project to deepen the power of capital and to extend a ‘market
civilisation’ in which the transnational investor is the principal
political subject and in which the social is kept out and down.