President Trump launched his Board of Peace last week. He has appointed himself the board’s chair for life, and given himself the unilateral authority to veto decisions, approve the agenda and select his own successor.
The launch is a good time to reflect on a phrase so often bandied about – the ‘international rules-based order’ – and what it might mean for lawyers*. In my view, we continue to benefit significantly from it.
The United Nations is one of the primary products of this order, despite its failings. We ignore it for much of the time. A widespread belief is that Trump would like to supplant it with his Board of Peace.
The obvious question is: so what has the UN ever done for us (as lawyers)? As with the Roman Empire in the Monty Python original (pictured), the answer turns out to be, quite a lot.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of its earliest milestones, paving the way for the adoption of more than 70 human rights treaties. These are often quoted on behalf of our clients and cited in our lobbying of government. But it is true that the declaration is not lawyer-specific.
However, there have been key lawyer-supporting actions over the years, setting standards for our profession:
- the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers;
- a UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers;
- the UN Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems.
There are more minor declarations and documents along the way, too, all to support us in times of trouble with our governments.
Another entity embodying the rules-based order is the World Trade Organization (WTO). Trade in legal services is one of the services covered by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The WTO system helps support it, with the aim of more and better trade under a set of agreed rules. This has proved to be of great benefit to UK law firms.
The negotiation of the way in which lawyers can practise across borders, the register of commitments made by member countries, the system through which different types of legal services are classified and the data gathered by the secretariat – all protect and promote our work.
It is interesting that the criteria used by the usual run of bodies which have tried to define the rule of law in the past – the Bingham Centre, the World Justice Project and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe – do not include adherence to the international rules-based order within their definitions.
They deal with international law, which is often part of domestic law, and governments should clearly comply with that.
But I have two questions: is not the international rules-based order, which is a context and a setting for orderly interchange, something different from international law? And should not the international rules-based order be considered as part of the rule of law?
Trading relations can be based on personal whim and bullying: I will increase tariffs on your exports to my country if you do not treat your former leader in the way that I like or because of the way you spoke to me on the phone. Or it can be based on a system agreed by all who sign up, with publicly available rules, classifications, register of commitments, and so on. The WTO’s Appellate Body, which is supposed to deal with disputes under its framework, has been disabled since 2019, after the US blocked all judicial appointments to it.
Lawyers should support the international rules-based system in general. Its various manifestations have been good for our clients and us. I have cited the UN principles on lawyer conduct and the flourishing of trade in legal services
under the WTO. (There are similar examples from Europe, with the Council of Europe’s recent Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer, and the EU’s various lawyer directives which govern trade in legal services within the EU’s borders.)
We should support an atmosphere for establishing widely agreed international rules and standards, whether they amount to law or not. They reinforce the values which lawyers hold dear, such as justice, fairness, transparency and equality.
The measure of the rule of law within a particular country should include an evaluation of the extent to which that country supports an international rules-based order. Can a country which acts like a gangster abroad, whatever the state of the rule of law at home, be considered as fully complying with the rule of law?
In this light, I await with hope the instruments backing lawyers’ principles – and lawyers’ protection – from the new Board of Peace.
* This article was submitted before the US-Israeli attacks on Iran
Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society
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