Global Ordo-Liberalism, Private Power and the Transfiguration of Diplomatic Law

Noe Cornago 

University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
October 16, 2013

Oñati Socio-Legal Series, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2013 
Abstract:      

Diplomatic law is commonly depicted as a field of law particularly differentiated and stable, and apparently at least not particularly vulnerable to the tensions associated to the restructuring of the global political economy which are so easily observable in other fields of international law. For centuries its formative process was customary. Later, early diplomatic practices, institutions, and norms were tailored to measure the functional and normative needs of a world of nation States. However, it was not until the signing in 1961 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that its basic rules were formally codified. But, as the preamble in this Convention affirms, the rules of customary law continue to govern all questions not expressly regulated by its contents. Custom however is not always the residue of the past that some practitioners and scholars use to imagine. Moreover, its formative processes are also embedded in wider historical transformations of global capitalism. Through the examination of current transformations affecting diplomatic settlement of disputes, diplomatic protection, diplomatic immunity and diplomatic reciprocity, this article contends that diplomatic law is becoming another field of struggle, both particularly unexpected and revealing, in the current transition from embedded liberalism towards a new era of global ordo-liberalism.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 30

Keywords: Global law making, Diplomatic Law, Privatization, International Law, Ordo-liberalism, Diplomatic Protection, Diplomatic Immunity, Diplomatic Reciprocity, Settlement of Disputes. Decisiones del Derecho global, Derecho Diplomático, Privatización, Derecho Internacional, Ordo-liberalismo.

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2341013