Trade & Economic Law

[Aphiwan Natasha King (@A_N_King) is an international lawyer and future pupil barrister at 4 Pump Court. Any views expressed or implied in this article are those of the author alone.] Recent years have seen an increase in initiatives designed to improve equality and diversity in international arbitral proceedings. Unfortunately, statistics on diversity in arbitral appointments remain dismal, with women comprising only...

[Jeffrey Vogt is currently the Rule of Law Director of the Solidarity Center and co-founder and Chair of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network. Ruwan Subasinghe is Legal Director at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and a practising solicitor. He sits on the Boards of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network, the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and...

[Dr. Mona Paulsen is an Assistant Professor in International Economic Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science.] Dramatic escalation of economic sanctions on the Russian Federation have made one thing clear – trade and security are no longer strange bedfellows. On 2 March 2022, Ukraine formally invoked the security exceptions of the World Trade Organization (Article XXI of the GATT 1994, Article XIVbis...

[Richard L. Kilpatrick, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Business Law at the College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina (USA).] A Technical Tool (Re)Emerges in the Sanctions Spotlight At a time when a violent ground war has mobilized on the European continent, it has been surprising to see a bank messaging system under such intense public debate. Even a month prior to Russia’s...

[Charlotte Beaucillon is a professor of European and public international law at Université de Lille.] Impact on Economic Operators: Promising Paths from Macro-economy to Human Rights Diligence Part III of the Research Handbook on Unilateral and Extraterritorial Sanctions is devoted to the impact of unilateral and extraterritorial sanctions on economic operators: they are the main addressees of the legal injunctions contained in unilateral and extraterritorial sanctions,...

[Charlotte Beaucillon is a professor of European and public international law at Université de Lille.] From the ‘Comply’ Research Project to the Research Handbook: Triggering Dialogue The Research Handbook on Unilateral and Extraterritorial Sanctions, published in late August 2021, is the result of the ‘COMPLY’ research project, a two-year endeavour involving 28 academics and practitioners from around the world - most of whom I...

[ Dr Elvira Domínguez-Redondo is an Associate Professor of International Law at Middlesex University, London (UK).] The topic of sanctions in general, and their use as an enforcement mechanism linked to human rights violations specifically, is deeply controversial. It encompasses antagonist positions that oscillate between those focusing on the paralyzing impact of an international machinery that requires inter-state cooperation to function, and those highlighting the...

[Eirik Bjorge is a Professor at the University of Bristol.] Introduction Sanctions are not an invention of the United Nations system: they predate the United Nations and have a long pedigree in the history of inter-State relations. This long pedigree is buttressed by extensive State practice which supports the unilateral right to impose such sanctions. It would therefore be incorrect to assert that only international organs such...

[Marco Fasciglione is a researcher of International Law at CNR.] Introduction According to a common belief existing among State officials and international law scholars, unilateral and extraterritorial economic sanctions would be a valuable alternative to armed conflicts. This is either because sanctions would, according to Reisman and Stevick (at 94), “reinforce public commitment to the norm that has been violated and generate a sense of civic virtue,...

[Tristan Kohl Associate is a Professor of International Economics at the University of Groningen in the Faculty of Economics and Business.] The Economics of Sanction Impositions A central question in the study of international sanctions is if, and how, sanctions alter the incentives of economic agents in the sending country to do business with agents in the sanctioned, targeted state. In this regard, the empirical...

[Stefano Palestini is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.] Imposing sanctions is a common practice in the contemporary international order.  As Erica Moret (chapter 2: 23-24) shows, since 1990, the United States and the European Union (EU) have imposed 150 and 75 sanction regimes respectively. Furthermore, more than half of EU sanctions have been imposed autonomously...

[Elin Hellquist is a researcher in the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University.] If you want to take the temperature on international relations (IR), study sanctions. Competing understandings of core IR-concepts such as sovereignty, power, legitimacy and justice are embodied in the politics of sanctions, classically described as an instrument ‘between words and wars’ (Staibano & Wallensteen 2005). Moreover, the empirical universe of sanctions is an...