Global Justice and International Economic Law
Three Takes

For centuries, international trade has been seen as essential to the wealth and power of nations. More recently we have started to understand its problematic role as an engine of distributive justice. In this compelling book Frank J. Garcia proposes a new way to evaluate, construct and manage international trade - one that is based on norms of economic justice, comparative advantage and national interest. Garcia examines three ways to conceptualize the problem of trade and global justice, drawn from Rawlsian liberalism, communitarianism and consent theory. These approaches illustrate specific issues of importance to the way global justice has been theorized, offering a pluralistic mode of arguing for global justice and highlighting the unique modes of discourse we employ when engaging with global justice and their implications for conceptualizing and arguing the problem. Garcia suggests a new direction for trade agreements built around truly consensual trade negotiations and the kind of international economic system they would structure.

1. International justice, or global justice as the foreign policy of liberal states; 2. Globalization and the possibility of a global community of justice; 3. Global justice as consensual exchange: consent, oppression, and the nature of trade itself.

Frank J. Garcia is a Professor of Law at the Boston College Law School. A Fulbright Scholar, he has lectured widely on globalization and international economic law in Europe, South America and Asia. He has served on the Executive Boards of the International Economic Law and International Legal Theory interest groups of the American Society of International Law, and is the Book Review editor and an editorial board member of the Journal of International Economic Law. Garcia is the author of Trade, Inequality, and Justice: Toward a Liberal Theory of Just Trade (2003) and co-editor of Global Justice and International Economic Law: Opportunities and Challenges (with Chios Carmody and John Linarelli, 2012).