About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


72 U. Toronto L.J. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/utlj72 and id is 1 raw text is: FAREWELL TO THE F-WORD? FRAGMENTATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW IN TIMES OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC The proliferation of internalional legal regimes, norms, and institutions in the post->Cold War era, known as the fragmientalion' of international law, has sparked extensive debate among jurists. This debate has evolved as a lialertical process, seeing legal scholarship shifting from grave concern about fragmentation's potentially negative impacts on the international legal order to a more optimistic view of the phenomenon, with recent literature suggesting that the tools nered to contain fragmentation 's ill-effects are today all at hand, thus arguing that the time has comre to bid farewell to the fword. 'Drawing on the COVID-19 crisis as a test case and considering the unresolved problems in existing fragmentation literature that this crisis brings to the fore, this article asks whether such calls have perhap>s been premature. Existing works on fragientalion, the article submits, including those bilding farewell to the fword, have mainly foiused on iem problems of conflicts between internalional norms or international institutions, esprially conflicts between international courts over comipeting jurisdictions and interp ralions of law. But, as the COVID-19 case - and, particularly, the deficient cooperation markl bltween the numerous international organizations reacting to the crisis - shows, the fragientalion of the international legal order does not only give rise to the potential conse- quences of conflicts of norms and clashes between international courts. Fragmentation also gives rise to pressing challenges of coordlinalion when a proactive and cohesive international response is <requird to addbress global problrs like COVID-19, whir rut arross multiple inter- national organizalions playing critical roles in the creation, amlinistration, and application of international law. By foregoun ding cooperation between international organizations as a vital-yet-deficient form of governance under conditions offragmentation, the article argues, the COVID-19 crisis not only denotes that the time is not yet ripe to bid farewell to the fword. It further points to the need to expand the fragmentation debate, going beyond its conflict- and court-centred focus, while probing new tools for tackling unsettled problems that arise from the segmentation of international law along sectoral lines. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, fragmentation of international law, global govern- ance, international cooperation, international law, international organizations, pro- liferation of international legal regimes, norms, and institutions I Introduction At the turn of the twenty-first century, the count of international treaties and agreements, the number of international organizations and judicial bodies, and the scope of international authority bestowed upon these global governance structures 'have reached all-times highs.'1 As a result, the twenty-first-century * Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel 1 Christian Kreuder-Sonnen & Michael Zurn, 'After Fragmentation: Norm Collisions, Inter- face Conflicts, and Conflict Management' (2020) 9 Global Constitutionalism 241 at 241-2 [Kreuder-Sonnen & Zurn, 'After Fragmentation']. (Winter 2022) 72 UTLJ © UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS DOI: 10.3138/utlj-2021-0007 Sivan Shlomo Agon*