Transnational Economic Actors and Legal Pluralism: ‘Constitutional Disobedience’ as an Instrument for the Internalization of Human Rights into Economic Legal Systems

Part I of the paper analyses the relationship between domestic systems and transnational economic actors adopting a legal pluralist framework. It argues that the human rights responsibilities of transnational enterprises and economic regimes must be understood as an internalization/institutionalization of socio-political demands – possibly conveyed by State systems – by the legal systems of transnational economic actors. Part II develops these analyses using ‘constitutional resistance’ doctrines as a case study. It argues that instruments such as the Calvo and the ‘constitutional substitution’ doctrines, distinctive of Latin-American constitutionalism, may be used towards the sources through which transnational systems flow, namely international economic law. Such use of ‘constitutional resistance’ doctrines could be an effective instrument of ius-generation, inducing significant changes in the structures/processes of economic globalization.