Angel Rodrigo, Tenured Lecturer in Public International Law with the Department of Law at UPF

One of the aims of the Planetary Wellbeing project is to help find answers to the challenge of safeguarding certain essential global public goods and universal interests and values, including, amongst others, the lives of people and the planet, education, health, the environment and the fight against climate change. The complexity of the problems, challenges and interests at stake requires an approach that is at once integrated and interdisciplinary. 

To this end, the political and legal governance of global public interests must be improved. Global constitutionalism can contribute decisively to this goal. It holds that these global issues, public goods, and universal interests and values are the concern of all stakeholders in the international community – whether they are states, international organizations, members of civil society or from the private sector – and that they must be addressed politically and legally at all levels, including the global one. In this regard, it offers both a political project and a legal approach. 

The political project of global constitutionalism seeks to subject power to the law. In other words, it aims to limit, regulate or allow the exercise of public or private power. This political project requires the development of global public policies, the recognition and protection of essential fundamental rights, and the regulation and protection of these issues, public goods and global interests and values. The global constitutionalism project is not just a question of technical management of the global public interest, which is essential for Planetary Wellbeing. It is also a political project. As such, it aims to offset the deconstitutionalization that has taken place at the state level as a result of globalization. Its authority depends on the participation of everyone to identify, discuss, submit to criticism and adopt political and legal decisions regarding how we want to address these challenges.

As a legal approach, global constitutionalism is a methodological tool that helps explain and organize more complex realities. It helps us reinterpret the current international legal system to discover new qualities, possibilities and functions of certain existing principles, rules and institutions in the international community. At the same time, it also helps us identify and advocate for the need to create new norms and institutions that make it possible to fulfil the new constitutional functions.

In short, to meet the challenges posed by the objectives of the Planetary Wellbeing project, it is necessary to improve the political and legal governance of the international community. Global constitutionalism offers a political project and legal approach for doing so.