The Political Humanities circle is proud to announce the first 2024 session of its Conference Series presented within Sciences Po Law School and open to all participants, in person and on Zoom.

Florian Couveinhes-Matsumoto: a critical look into International Economic Law

The extractivist political economy underlying international law has become a running theme of contemporary scholarship. Identifying the constitutive function of law in global capitalism raises many key questions: What latent political choices are naturalized through law? How to speak about law beyond its internal discourse? And, ultimately, what reform of legal institutions could be undertaken to promote social and ecological policies in international law?

Those are some of the issues addressed by Florian Couveinhes-Matsumoto (ENS) in a newly released book Droit international économique (PUF, 2023). The book is structured around the political economy dimensions of the field, elaborating a distinction between “convivial” and “growth-oriented” international economic law. It takes a critical stance on the normative and institutional autonomy of the branch, calling for its opening to social and ecological rationalities.

International investment and trade law, described respectively as the law of private investor protection and the law of commercial deregulation, are at the core of this critique of legal neoliberalism.

In this session, M. Couveinhes-Matsumoto will present his ideas and expand on the structural reasons explaining international economic law’s failure to cope with the contemporary environmental and climate crisis. The session will provide an opportunity to engage with critical approaches to international law and discuss potential avenues towards a “convivial” legality.