After the Cold War: Does international trade and financial law matter?

Abstract

The subject of this thesis was broached by Bertham when he was writing his Principles of International Law". The citizen of the world, the enlightened defender of the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" principle in domestic law and politics, contemplating a universal international code had in mind the common and equal utility of all nations. In the intervening centuries the exercises in calculus of pair and pleasures, costs and benefits have so far predominated in the leamed world over the profounder enquiries of the philosopher and the lawyer into those processes of human faculty which, by determining reasonable preference, guide the nations' and individual choices. Thus, International law is oftener reckoned with mathematics and calculus than with logic and social psychology. There is much here in this doctoral thesis, therefore, which is novel, and, being novel, unsifted, inaccurate, or deficient. I propose my systematic conception of the vast subject of the post Cold war international economic law and international economic practice for criticism and enlargement at the hand of the jury members and others.