The foundations of the international legal order

The multifaceted character of globalization constantly confuses our understanding of the theoretical foundations of the global legal order. One of the most common answers to the complexity of any such undertaking has been provided by international constitutionalists, who have advocated a conception of the global legal order that corresponds to a table of global values which echo the similar objective standards of domestic law. Liberals and neo-liberals have also floated value-based representations of the foundations of the global order. This article is an attempt to challenge such Kantian or Grotian conceptions of the global legal order with a view of laying out a neo Hobbesian understanding of the common denominators of the global legal order, that is an international legal order based on (individual and common) interests rather than global values. Such a conception, as will be demonstrated, inevitably leads to relativism and entails an inextricable and continuous discussion about what constitutes the public good. Additionally, besides playing down the understandings of international law as a normative project, the interest-based conception of the international legal order defended in this article fosters the transformation-capacity of international law, as it strips the latter of the imperialistic and hegemonic overtones that are inherent to any value-based understanding of the foundations of the global legal order.