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Sanctions and the Rules-Based International Economic Order

The past months have seen a significant expansion and intensification of the phenomenon of “international sanctions”, unilateral economic measures adopted by individual states and the European Union to respond to what they perceive as unlawful or undesirable behavior performed or tolerated by other states.

The recent wave of economic sanctions, imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, is unprecedented in many ways. At the same time, it follows a trend of unilateral behavior replacing action within global fora such as the World Trade Organization as a means of addressing economic and political disputes at the international level.

As a matter of their consequences for the global economic order, this multiplication of unilateral measures, compounded with the demise of the WTO Appellate Body, may signal the breakdown of a rules-based multilateral order. Some of the actors adopting these measures, however, claim that they are in fact the instruments required to preserve rules-based interaction in the absence of authoritative compulsory adjudication.

In this SIEL Conversation, participants examine this wave of unilateral economic measures, discuss their implications for the global political and economic order, and consider the role of law and the prospects for legal regulation in this so-called “geoconomic” world order.