CALL FOR PAPERS N.º 39 - IURIS DICTIO JOURNAL
The crisis of multilateralism and its impacts on contemporary law
Iuris Dictio Journal cordially invites the academic community, researchers, legal practitioners and specialists in related fields to submit articles for the Thematic Dossier of its N.º 39 issue, to be published between January and June 2027. This issue will be devoted to critical reflection on the current crisis of multilateralism and its repercussions for law at the global, regional and national levels.
The international order, designed after the Second World War to foster cooperation and prevent conflict, is currently experiencing profound tension. The weakening of multilateral spaces, normative fragmentation and the increase in geopolitical disputes have called into question the architecture of global governance. Contemporary challenges such as the climate crisis, the proliferation of armed conflicts, transnational organised crime, the resurgence of nationalist discourses, trade disputes, the crisis in the protection of human rights and rapid technological transformation require joint responses but often exceed the capacity of existing normative and institutional frameworks.
In the field of security, recurring blockages in the United Nations Security Council have hindered the adoption of measures in response to humanitarian crises and armed conflicts, as evidenced in recent debates on Ukraine, Palestine, Iran and other scenarios of protracted violence. In the economic sphere, the World Trade Organisation is facing a crisis resulting from the blockage of appointments to its Appellate Body, which has weakened dispute settlement mechanisms and encouraged unilateral responses, tariff disputes and new forms of trade competition. In the climate field, difficulties in achieving ambitious and binding commitments, tensions over climate finance, energy transition, loss and damage, and common but differentiated responsibilities reveal the limits of multilateralism in responding to global-scale crises.
Added to this is the tendency of some States to withdraw from, defund, disregard or challenge international organisations, treaties and mechanisms. In recent years, these debates have arisen around the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Paris Agreement, the International Criminal Court, the Inter-American Human Rights System and international arbitration mechanisms, including investment arbitration. Although each of these cases responds to different contexts, they all reflect broader tensions concerning legitimacy, compliance, sovereignty and international cooperation.
As a result, the global system is experiencing a growing gap between formal norms and their effective implementation. The selective application of obligations, the proliferation of double standards and the weakening of monitoring mechanisms raise questions about the binding force of law in contexts marked by asymmetries of power. Faced with the difficulty of reaching broad consensus, States are increasingly turning to bilateral agreements, informal forums, coalitions of like-minded States and flexible forms of cooperation, such as the G7, the G20, BRICS+, regional trade agreements or the more recent Shield of the Americas. These spaces may offer more agile responses, but they also contribute to the fragmentation of law and global governance.
This crisis also affects different fields of domestic law, as the weakening of multilateralism pressures States to recalibrate their understanding of sovereignty, generates tensions in constitutional law, alters the rules of commercial and tax law, makes the protection of environmental law and the regulation of the technology sector more complex, and weakens mechanisms for the protection of rights. Thus, for example, disputes over the regulation of digital platforms and artificial intelligence, domestic climate litigation and controversies over international taxation show how the multilateral crisis is also transforming domestic legal debates.
The current crisis of multilateralism can also be analyzed from different theoretical and legal perspectives. Critical, postcolonial, and decolonial approaches raise questions about whether this crisis is a temporary anomaly of the multilateral system, a consequence of recent geopolitical transformations, an expression of historical inequalities in law, or an opportunity to revisit its mechanisms of representation, cooperation, and decision-making.
Inequalities in global decision-making, demands for the reform of multilateral organizations, competition among great powers, and fragmented responses to common problems affect States and societies that have had less capacity to influence the formation of international rules in differentiated ways. In the Global South and, more specifically, in Latin America, these tensions shape legal and political debates on debt, climate finance, energy transition, investment arbitration, regional cooperation, protection of the Amazon, human mobility, regulation of new technologies, and equitable access to medicines, among other issues. These topics show that the crisis of multilateralism affects international institutions as well as the way in which national and regional legal systems address global problems.
In this sense, the call seeks to open a space to examine the contributions and deficits of multilateralism, as well as the tensions generated by its weakening in different fields of law. At the same time, the dossier invites analyses of the limitations of the existing multilateral order and of the legal risks and effects of its possible alternatives. The guiding questions are therefore whether multilateralism should be defended, reformed, or superseded; how its crisis is transforming contemporary law; and what legal responses may emerge at different levels, global, regional, and national.
The Thematic Dossier N.º 39 of Iuris Dictio Journal, coordinated by Sebastián Abad Jara, seeks to bring together academic contributions that analyse how the crisis of multilateralism is transforming contemporary law. The dossier will accept theoretical or doctrinal texts, analyses of national or international regulations, jurisprudential commentary and comparative analyses. These articles may be developed from interdisciplinary perspectives, as long as they are related to the indicated matter and directly related with the field of law.
This dossier is conceived as an open and plural space to analyse, from diverse legal perspectives, the effects of the crisis of multilateralism. The call seeks to receive contributions from different legal fields, including human rights, public international law, constitutional law, commercial law, investment law, environmental law, international criminal law, migration law, tax law, technology law, legal theory, comparative law, critical approaches to international law and other related disciplines. Accordingly, authors may address, among others, the following research areas:
- The crisis of multilateralism, transformations in international law and critical approaches to the international legal order.
- Postcolonial, decolonial, TWAIL and other critical international law approaches in the face of the crisis of multilateralism.
- Difficulties in protecting human rights in the face of loss of institutional trust, nationalist discourses and democratic backsliding.
- International trade, tariff disputes and the stagnation of multilateral dispute settlement systems.
- Investment law and State sovereignty in the face of global crises.
- Environmental law, climate diplomacy and the limits of green multilateralism.
- Migration law, asylum systems and legal responses to humanitarian crises.
- Peace, security, international justice and the role of courts in relation to the politics of major powers.
- International tax law and fiscal cooperation in a fragmented world.
- Transnational corporations and legal responsibility in contexts of global fragmentation.
- Artificial intelligence and the challenges of global digital governance.
- Constitutionalism and tensions between national legal orders and international norms.
- Regional cooperation systems as an alternative or complement to universal multilateralism.
- The Global South, in the face of the multilateral crisis, demands reform of the international order and disputes over more representative global governance.
The call is also open to submissions of articles on diverse legal topics for the Miscellaneous section, book reviews for the Reviews section, and interviews for the Interviews section. All articles must be original and must not be under simultaneous consideration for publication elsewhere.
Articles may be written in Spanish or English and must comply with the journal’s publication guidelines, available at the following link:
https://revistas.usfq.edu.ec/index.php/iurisdictio/about/submissions
The deadline for the submission of articles is December 15, 2026. Articles must be uploaded to the journal’s OJS platform, after prior user registration, at the following link:
http://revistas.usfq.edu.ec/index.php/iurisdictio/user/register
For any further questions, please contact:
revistaiurisdictio@usfq.edu.ec
We would be grateful for the dissemination of this call for papers.