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Taking Global Constitutionalism as an agora, a platform for international interdisciplinary discussions this article asks a question about the state we are in with regard to the international order as an order that is not just a ‘rule-based order’ but also more substantially, a ‘legal order’ based on the rule of law. The topic is illustrated with reference to examples of ‘contested compliance’ i.e. objections to implementing international law and/or international rulings by international actors on behalf of signatories of states parties of a treaty. Three questions guide this discussion. The first is a question of normative change: are we facing a change regarding United Nations member states’ respect for and handling of the rule of law, or is a larger change of international law itself imminent? The second is a question about the effects of the shift from ‘normal’ contestations of norms to ‘deep’ contestations of the international order itself. And the third is a question about pluralism and diversity: are the UN Charter Order’s institutions, conventions and organisations sufficiently equipped to respond to an ever more diverse range of internationally, transnationally, and sub-nationally raised justice-claims? The article elaborates on each of the three themes in light of the current situation of contested compliance with obligations under international law.

In this editorial, we consider the ways in which liberal constitutionalism is challenged by and presents challenges to the climate crisis facing the world. Over recent decades, efforts to mitigate the climate crisis have generated a new set of norms for states and non-state actors, including regulatory norms (emission standards, carbon regulations), organising principles (common but differentiated responsibility) and fundamental norms (climate justice, intergenerational rights, human rights). However, like all norms, these remain contested. Particularly in light of their global reach, their specific behavioural implications and interpretations and the related obligations to act remain debatable and the overwhelming institutionalization of the neoliberal market economy makes clear and effective responses to climate change virtually impossible within liberal societies.

Private actors and institutions, and by extension private law itself, are increasingly being forced to reckon with a multiplicity of challenges that extend beyond the domain of private law as it is traditionally conceived. They reflect threats to the global constitutional order and liberal constitutionalism, and threats to individual and collective fundamental rights and constitutional values. As a result, the role of private law in framing and facilitating the development of the global economy and globalization often does not fall within the direct purview of public international lawyers. This editorial aims to examine the role of private law in the litigation and enforcement of public interests against the background of the public/private divide. This is done in light of the increasing role adopted by private actors, including corporations, beyond the private realm.

For the past decade, the most salient form of this has been internal crisis.3 As we observed following Trump, Brexit, and a general resurgence of far-right parties across the diverse polities, ‘far right populist authoritarianism’ poses an immediate threat to LDC.4 Yet, a year after Trump’s defeat and with the EU having survived Brexit in part because states central to its integrity, such as France, have – so far – resisted far right populist leadership, the norms of constitutionalism have shown a measure of robustness.5 The possibility that LDC might ultimately be extinguished by far-right populism remains, but so far it has survived a number of traumatic political events internal to its established champions. The authoritarian weaponization of the values of global constitutionalism Weaponization of the values of LDC against constitutional democracies has taken three significant forms: exploiting crises of migration, which raise tensions for the commitment to human rights; claims that ethnic collective self-determination grants autocratic regimes the right to annex or co-opt all or part of democratic regimes; and manipulating constitutionalism’s commitment to speech and discourse rights to surreptitiously meddle (through new technology) in popular self-determination. Given the commitment of LDC to recognizing the intrinsic value of persons and the subsequent universality of rights, managing refugee migration – crudely stated, excluding migrants from entry into polities – raises a fundamental tension: philosophically, national origin is arbitrary, and differentiating persons on its basis contravenes liberalism’s Kantian inclinations.10 The presence of migration has been exploited domestically by far-right ethnonationalists within constitutionalist regimes. Western officials have suggested that the authoritarian president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, has deliberately admitted refugees from war-torn and economically deprived areas into Belarus and then funnelled them to the Polish border11 as a reprisal for Western condemnation of his allegedly fraudulent electoral victory in the 2020 and subsequent Western sanctions.12 The particular scenario is reminiscent of President Tayyip Erdogan’s deployment of migration policy as a bargaining chip with the European Union when Western governments reacted to his expansion of his executive powers in Turkey.13 However, the Belarus–Poland crisis presents additional layers: according to Western powers, Lukashenko is acting as a proxy for Russia in his efforts to undermine the European Union, a constitutional arrangement forged in cosmopolitan ethnopluralism rather than autocratic ethnonationalism; and the engagement with Poland in particular targets a state that faces concerns of far-right democratic backsliding based in ethnonationalism – precisely the type of drift rightward driven by anti-immigrant xenophobia.

Introduction Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare tumour of skin. This study is a retrospective audit of patients with MCC from St Vincent’s and Mater Hospital, Sydney, Australia. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of radiotherapy (RT) on the local and regional control of MCC lesions and survival of patients with MCC. Method The data bases in anatomical pathology, RT and surgery. We searched for patients having a diagnosis of MCC between 1996 and 2007. Patient, tumour and treatment characteristics were collected and analysed. Univariate survival analysis of categorical variables was conducted with the Kaplan-Meier method together with the Log-Rank test for statistical significance. Continuous variables were assessed using the Cox regression method. Multivariate analysis was performed for significant univariate results. Results Sixty seven patients were found. Sixty two who were stage I-III and were treated with radical intent were analysed. 68% were male. The median age was 74 years. Forty-two cases (68%) were stage I or II, and 20 cases (32%) were stage III. For the subset of 42 stage I and II patients, those that had RT to their primary site had a 2-year local recurrence free survival of 89% compared with 36% for patients not receiving RT (p<0.001). The cumulative 2-year regional recurrence free survival for patients having adjuvant regional RT was 84% compared with 43% for patients not receiving this treatment (p<0.001). Immune status at initial surgery was a significant predictor for OS and MCCSS. In a multivariate analysis combining macroscopic size (mm) and immune status at initial surgery, only immune status remained a significant predictor of overall survival (HR=2.096, 95% CI: 1.002-4.385, p=0.049). Conclusions RT is associated with significant improvement in local and regional control in Merkel cell carcinoma. Immunosuppression is an important factor in overall survival.

This article responds to Daniel Whelan and Jack Donnelly's argument challenging narratives about Western opposition to economic and social rights. Their narrative on the foundational role of Western elites in creating economic and social rights does not sufficiently demonstrate the centrality of economic and social rights. Their argument lacks a clear explanation of how postwar elite commitments relate to broader Western domestic normative acceptance. I draw on international norms and legal theory to show how the domestic political context of the United States, labor rights, the welfare state, and other international institutions provide evidence against their claims.

This paper engages the literature on the legal geographies of labour and postdemocracy in order to examine the role of law in limiting the labour rights of non‐standard workers. To do so, it analyses the effects of civil suits for obstruction of business against workers and trade union activists in South Korea. First embraced by liberal administrations as an alternative to authoritarian forms of labour control, civil suits for obstruction of business have become a common feature of labour struggles since 2002 and have led to millions of dollars in damage claims and provisional seizure of assets being applied against workers for engaging in collective action. We argue that by treating many ordinary trade union practices as “threats of force” that obstruct business and are thus liable for compensation, the law has been an essential component in the creation of a postdemocratic mode of labour control: one in which many fundamental labour rights are officially recognised, unlike under authoritarian regimes, but undermined in practice by narrowly limiting workers’ ability to pursue lawful collective action.

Faced with the economic pressures of globalization, many countries have sought to curb the fundamental right of workers to join trade unions and engage in collective action. In response, trade unions in developed countries have strategically used their own governments' commitments to human rights as a basis for resistance. Since the protection of human rights remains an important normative principle in global affairs, democratic countries cannot merely ignore their human rights obligations and must balance their international commitments with their desire to remain economically competitive and attractive to investors.Human Rights and Labor Solidarityanalyzes trade unions' campaigns to link local labor rights disputes to international human rights frameworks, thereby creating external scrutiny of governments. As a result of these campaigns, states engage in what political scientist Susan L. Kang terms a normative negotiation process, in which governments, trade unions, and international organizations construct and challenge a broader understanding of international labor rights norms to determine whether the conditions underlying these disputes constitute human rights violations. In three empirically rich case studies covering South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Canada, Kang demonstrates that this normative negotiation process was more successful in creating stronger protections for trade unions' rights when such changes complemented a government's other political interests. She finds that states tend not to respect stronger economically oriented human rights obligations due to the normative power of such rights alone. Instead, trade union transnational activism, coupled with sufficient political motivations, such as direct economic costs or strong rule of law obligations, contributed to changes in favor of workers' rights.

How can \"on-the-ground\" field research contribute to and complicate our understanding of international relations, particularly international law--an area that typically is considered far removed from everyday political practice? To address this question, this article draws on my three-month field experience in Seoul, South Korea, in the summer of 2006--a research trip that initally was intended for elite interviews of government officials, trade-union officers, and other public figures. The goal of this research was to consider the extent to which international law--as protected and promoted by key international organizations including the International Labor Organization (ILO)--influenced and assisted trade unions in their struggle to protect their basic organizing rights in the context of difficult domestic political circumstances. This article discusses the ILO and its role in promoting international labor rights in local contexts. As a result of my field research, I found that the ILO's publicly available documents were extremely helpful but insufficient to understand the local-global interaction in South Korea. My field research provided a deeper ethnographic immersion in the South Korean labor movement, which was necessary to understand the legal disputes relevant to my research interests. The ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), unique in its tripartite organizational form (i.e., it includes representatives from member-state governments and both employer and worker organizations). The ILO has various conventions that address workers' basic organizing rights, including Convention 87 (Freedom of Association) and Convention 98 (Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining). States can freely decide whether to ratify these (and other) ILO labor conventions. A body called the \"Committee on Freedom of Association\" (hereinafter referred to as \"the Committee\") accepts and inquires about complaints from any worker organizations against member states about alleged failures to uphold their basic organizing rights (i.e., the right to form, join, and act collectively within unions, including the right to strike). The Committee is a unique international body, with a high degree of accessibility and openness and a strong investigative role. Like the ILO in general, the Committee is composed of an independent chairperson and nine committee members equally representing governments, worker organizations, and employer organizations (International Labor Organization 2015). The rules of the Committee allow for worker and employer organizations from nonratifying states to bring complaints against their government for perceived violations of workers' organizing rights. The Committee decides whether to accept the case and then allows the government to respond to the allegations. After reviewing the evidence, the Committee makes specific recommendations about the laws and practices in question. Because organizations submit additional reports about the same complaints, this can become a multiyear process, which includes clarifications, updates, disagreements, and negotiations. Unlike most international bodies, the Committee does not rely on state ratification of certain international conventions to authorize its investigative mandate. Rather, it holds states responsible for protecting workers' fundamental organizing rights by virtue of their ILO membership status, regardless of whether a state has ratified the relevant conventions (International Labor Organization 2012). As a result, the ILO expects and requires that all members respect and comply with these labor-rights standards. However, as in most international organizations, the ILO and the Committee lack enforcement power and must rely on persuasion and arguments about justice and human rights as their main tools. The Committee has received more than 3,000 cases since its creation in 1951, and it claims to have resolved labor-rights problems in 60 countries (International Labor Organization 2015).

US political parties, in trying to win elections and power, respond to changing political, social and economic conditions. They change their positions on policies, as a result of new constituencies, changing demands from existing constituencies, or the perception of new demands from the general public. The 2020–2021 pandemic changed the underlying health, political and economic conditions, and created new opportunities and conflicts between Democratic party leadership and grassroots activists and voters. The pandemic revealed the paucity of the existing social support systems, leading to renewed calls for universal provisions. In this paper, I will consider three social demands from the US left, and consider their successes and failure in the pandemic period: health care, education/childcare, and Black Lives Matter (BLM). I argue that the Democratic party did not incorporate the demands for greater social protections from existing party-related groups or change their positions to meet changing demands from the general public. I use public statements, press and social media to illustrate the failures of a united left political project in the United States. Im Versuch Wahlen zu gewinnen und an die Macht zu kommen, reagieren politische Parteien in den USA auf sich verändernde politische, soziale und wirtschaftliche Bedingungen. Sie ändern ihre Positionen, aufgrund neuer Wählergruppen, veränderter Forderungen bestehender Wählergruppen oder der Wahrnehmung neuer Forderungen in der Öff entlichkeit. Die Pandemie veränderte 2020–2021 die gesundheitlichen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen und schuf neue Möglichkeiten und Konflikte zwischen der demokratischen Parteiführung und den Aktivist*innen und Wähler*innen an der Basis. Die Pandemie machte die Unzulänglichkeit bestehender sozialer Unterstützungssysteme deutlich und führte zu erneuten Forderungen nach einer allgemeinen Grundversorgung. In diesem Beitrag werde ich drei soziale Forderungen der US-Linken betrachten sowie ihre Erfolge und Misserfolge in der Pandemiezeit untersuchen: nach Gesundheitsversorgung, Bildung/Kinderbetreuung und einer Polizeireform im Rahmen der Black Lives Matter (BLM) Bewegung. Ich argumentiere, dass die Demokratische Partei weder Forderungen nach mehr sozialem Schutz von bestehenden parteinahen Gruppen aufgenommen noch ihre Positionen geändert hat, um den neuen Forderungen aus der breiten Öffentlichkeit gerecht zu werden. Ich greife auf öffentliche Erklärungen, die Presse und soziale Medien zurück, um das Scheitern des politischen Projekts einer vereinigten Linken in den Vereinigten Staaten zu veranschaulichen.