The Common Concern of Humankind today is central to efforts to bring about enhanced international cooperation in fields including, but not limited to, climate change. This book explores the expression's potential as a future legal principle. It sets out the origins of Common Concern, its differences to other common interest legal principles, and expounds the potential normative structure and effects of the principle, applying an approach of carrots and sticks in realizing goals defined as a Common Concern. Individual chapters test the principle in different legal fields, including climate technology diffusion, marine plastic pollution, human rights enforcement, economic inequality, migration, and monetary and financial stability. They confirm that basic obligations under the principle of 'Common Concern of Humankind' comprise not only that of international cooperation and duties to negotiate, but also of unilateral duties to act to enhance the potential of public international law to produce appropriate public goods.

Presents the emerging principle of Common Concern of Humankind as legal response and to serious collective action crises.

International law has long been dominated by the State. But it has become apparent that this bias is unrealistic and untenable in the contemporary world as the rise of the notion of common goods challenges this dominance. These common goods – typically values (like human rights, rule of law, etc) or common domains (the environment, cultural heritage, space, etc) – speak to an emergent international community beyond the society of States and the attendant rights and obligations of non-State actors. This book details how three key areas of international law – human rights, culture and the environment – are pushing the boundaries in this field. Each category is of current and ongoing significance in legal and public discourse, as illustrated by the Syrian conflict (human rights and international humanitarian law), the destruction of mausoleums and manuscripts in Mali (cultural heritage), and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (the environment). Each exemplifies the need to move beyond a State-focused idea of international law. This timely volume explores how the idea of common goods, in which rights and obligations extend to individuals, groups and the international community, offers one such avenue and reflects on its transformative impact on international law.

The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. In Monetary Stability as a Common Concern in International Law, Lucía Satragno argues that monetary stability is a global public good that must be promoted and protected at all levels of governance. In doing so, the book accomplishes two tasks. On one hand, it provides an up to date analysis of the role of law and institutions in the international monetary field since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. On the other hand, it applies the methodological approach proposed by the novel doctrine of Common Concern of Humankind to monetary stability as a case study. Accordingly, the book examines not only the status quo of the international monetary system, but also looks at the ‘new and different realism’ that would be envisaged in monetary affairs in the case of a fully-fledged principle of Common Concern.

The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Are countries capable of reducing economic inequality under conditions of contemporary globalisation without cooperating and coordinating with other countries? While states are far from powerless to effect distributional change within their own sovereign space, Taking a Common Concern Approach to Economic Inequality makes the case that cooperation and coordination is indeed necessary, especially in relation to corporate taxation. It accordingly contemplates the utility of a transnational taxation system that is embedded in cooperative sovereignty through the recognition of rising economic inequality and its deleterious effects – including how increasingly unequal distributions within countries make transnational cooperation and coordination efforts less likely – as a common concern of humankind.

What can trade regulation contribute towards ameliorating the GHG emissions and reducing their concentrations in the atmosphere? This collection of essays analyses options for climate-change mitigation through the lens of the trade lawyer. By examining international law, and in particular the relevant WTO agreements, the authors address the areas of potential conflict between international trade law and international law on climate mitigation and, where possible, suggest ways to strengthen mutual supportiveness between the two regimes. They do so taking into account the drivers of human-induced climate change in energy markets and of consumption.

This book contains the final version of the 2018 Report of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise, as well as the related ILA Resolutions 5/2018 and 6/2018, both as adopted by the ILA at its 78th Biennial Conference, held in Sydney, Australia, 19–24 August 2018. In Part I of the Report, key information about the establishment of the Committee, its mandate and its work so far is presented. Part II of the Report addresses key law of the sea issues through a study of possible impacts of sea level rise and their implications under international law regarding maritime limits lawfully determined by the coastal States, and the agreed or adjudicated maritime boundaries. Part III of the Report addresses international law provisions, principles and frameworks for the protection of persons displaced in the context of sea level rise.