AVANT-COURTS
Decentring Legal Power: Avantgarde Courts at the Frontiers of the Global Economy
AVANT-COURTS investigates one of the single most important global transformations, namely the on-going shifts from a Western-dominated international legal order towards a multicentred one. Focusing on the battles over jurisdiction and legal knowledge at the frontiers of the global economy, the project analyses how geopolitical and geoeconomic processes are enabling new courts and litigation hubs to emerge and gain a foothold. Located in emerging centres of the global economy from Shenzhen to Dubai and driven by state capitalism or corporate power, these new courts are challenging both the dominant producers of law, mostly Western courts and legal hubs, and the dominant ways of producing law by hybridising law and legal institutions. As such, they are challenging the very idea of courts by creating a concurrent marketisation and politicisation of courts.
AVANT-COURTS will conduct a field-defining empirical analysis of how this transformation is unfolding, and how a new global map of law and dispute resolution is emerging, increasingly populated by new hybrid avantgarde courts. To do so, it investigates, to begin with, three distinct empirical spaces at the frontiers of the global economy: new economic spaces, outer space and virtual spaces.
AVANT-COURTS investigates the displacement of legal and judicial power towards new centres and hubs, and how this is not only challenging existing global centres of law and notions of courts. Across the defined empirical spaces (see below), AVANT-COURTS asks three closely related research questions:
- What are the causes and consequences of the new courts, and what are the resulting institutional designs, agency, and practices?
- How are the new courts applying domestic and international law, and are they creating new legal categories and fields to bolster their positions?
- What kind of markets and legal hubs are they creating, with what market shares, and with what consequences for existing, mostly Western, legal hubs and courts?
To respond to RQ1-3, the three empirical spaces are investigated through a common analytical framework consisting of three distinct yet inter-connected Research Streams (RS):
- Courts studies the legal-political processes related to the creation and institutionalisation of new courts in the three spaces (SP1-3) and their institutional design, operations, and agents.
- Laws, building on RS1, examines quantitatively and qualitatively the case law and practices of these new courts, and the extent to which they are producing novel and hybrid forms of law.
RS3.Markets & Hubs, building on RS1 and 2, explores how these new courts are tied to the making of new legal markets and hubs in competition with existing providers of dispute resolution.
The project explores courts at the frontiers of the global economy in three carefully selected empirical spaces (SPs):
- SP1.New Economic Spaces in terms of disputes related to special economic zones and beyond
- SP2.Outer Space in terms of cosmic disputes related to the booming space industry
- SP3.Virtual Spaces in terms of digital disputes
SP1. New Economic Spaces explores the rise of new international economic courts and their competition with established Western courts. Initially created to resolve conflicts in special economic zones, these new courts now offer jurisdiction to any two outside parties. While Western legal systems also allow this, the new courts, supported by their host states, provide low-cost, speedy services with advanced legal tech and benches featuring former Western apex court judges, e.g. the Qatar International Court, The Dubai International Financial Centre Court, the Astana International Financial Centre Court, and The China International Commercial Court. This has sparked a response from new or remodelled courts in Europe and Singapore, which have opened English-speaking chambers for international disputes. AVANT-COURTS analyse how these new courts have turned economic dispute resolution into a competitive market, leveraging Western legal expertise to challenge and even surpass Western courts.
SP2.Outer Space also focuses on the competition over jurisdiction between new and old courts. SP2 is different, however, because jurisdiction over outer space cannot be claimed as it is a global common governed by a regime of UN treaties. This has given the area a state-centric logic to dispute resolution, involving the International Court of Justice, claims commissions, and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Despite attempts, no international space court exists. However, the private space industry’s growth has given new impetus to the area, leading to a race for jurisdiction. For example, the United Arab Emirates has launched a Space Court in 2021, and other states are currently contemplating similar courts or refurbishing arbitral solutions as space courts to cater to this emerging market. The analysis explores how this competition is creating new courts and disrupting international dispute resolution in space law.
In SP3.Virtual Spaces the competition is different as it mainly unfolds between large private corporations, seeking to control on-line content through in-house private appeals systems, and public courts, seeking to protect individual rights. In SP3 the new courts include court-like institutions dedicated to resolving on-line disputes, for example the private law appeals systems set up by US social media platforms such as Meta, X (Twitter), and Snapchat, as well as Chinese platforms. These platforms’ courts provide different degrees of judicialization of their appeals systems, with Meta’s Oversight Board standing out as the most court-like. The developments observed in SP1 and 2 are, however also emerging in SP3. Recently, public courts have entered the race too. For instance, a specialised court, the Digital Economy Court, was created in Dubai’s growing legal hub. A set of ordinary international courts are already involved in similar disputes, such as the European Court of Human Rights, as well as domestic courts.
Researchers
| Name | Title | |
|---|---|---|
| Mikael Rask Madsen | Head of Centre, Professor |
|
Funding
Decentring Legal Power: Avantgarde Courts at the Frontiers of the Global Economy (Avant-Courts) is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.
Project period: 2025-2030.
Contact
Principal investigator
Mikael Rask Madsen