Can multilevel trade governance protect global public goods without constitutional restraints?

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2021Legal history confirms that general interests of citizens can be protected most effectively through ‘democratic’ and ‘republican constitutionalism’ protecting constitutional rights and remedies of citizens and of their democratic and judicial institutions to hold governments accountable for providing public goods (PGs). Yet, the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), and related multilevel governance institutions do not effectively protect general interests and corresponding rights of citizens. The inadequate legal, democratic, and judicial accountability of intergovernmental power politics entails that – outside Europe’s multilevel ‘common market constitutionalism’ and ‘human rights constitutionalism’ – many governance institutions fail to protect transnational PGs effectively. This contribution explains why – even if ‘global democracy’ remains a utopia – today’s universal recognition of ‘inalienable’ human rights and of related constitutional principles requires re-interpreting the power-oriented ‘international law of states’ as multilevel governance of transnational PGs for the benefit of citizens and their constitutional rights