‘Creabimus!' Creatively re-thinking the corporation and the social contract

This article rethinks the corporation and ‘the social contract with business' for the post-pandemic era. It uses a double historical orientation centred on the turbulence of the 1930s in Europe and America to insist on the company's relationship with government, and to explore transformations in the social contract now needed to socialise and ecologise global business. One part of this history looks forward, from Adolf Berle's modern corporation to the neoliberal corporation and regulatory governance. The article criticises a transformation of regulatory priorities in this era, closely analysing the shift to procedural mandates and questioning the corporate law tactic of ‘enlightening' companies. The second part looks backwards to industrial modernism and Walter Rathenau in Germany in the interwar era, and also earlier (the late 1890s), to salvage a different understanding of the company and social contract, built around more constructivist visions of law, government and social consciousness. This part of the article is insistent about the metaphysical aspects of law and about developing law's equalising powers around corporate impactfulness and injustice. It promotes ‘thought' about collectivism (John Keynes) and the legal and regulatory recalibration that is needed to confront certain amassing challenges of the present. The article makes institutional transformation about shifting onto a different historical axis, whereby we might re-learn collectivist ambitions around the company that co-evolves with law and government, live to the public interest. It proposes a new social contract with business and a new regulatory modus involving law's ‘Creabimus' and ‘regulating dangerously' for situations of widely adverse corporate impactfulness.

Patents and other conditions of access to vaccines

This paper reviews the experience with access to vaccines during the pandemic. Its inquiry is the extent to which pharmaceutical patents have hindered or enhanced access when compared to other factors or conditions like health spending, manufacturing capacity, and regulatory competence. To conduct the review, the paper queries the regulatory governance perspective when it suggests a decentralised field of legal pluralism will maximise access. It recalls the pre-COVID-19 experience with antiretrovirals to provide pointers to the present situation. It then examines the experience with COVID vaccines under the headings of invention, production, procurement, and distribution. The review finds while patents may hinder access to vaccines, other, essential conditions for access, like independent manufacturing capacity and commitment to procurement, are not established. Regulatory governance must now adopt a much more concerted, coordinated approach, mobilising both patent regulation and other key conditions to further access. The review is an opportunity to gather some of the copious commentary on this issue. © 2023 The Authors. The Journal of World Intellectual Property published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

IMO’s Marine Environmental Regulatory Governance and China’s Role: An Empirical Study of China’s Submissions

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) plays a significant role in global marine environmental governance, providing a forum of regulatory oversight for member states. Member states are the main actors of the IMO and exert considerable influence on the process of lawmaking. Among these member states, China is unique due to its multiple identities. There are various factors influencing interests behind China’s multiple identities, which fully engage the country in various shipping and maritime trade activities. This article examines China’s role in the IMO marine environmental regulatory governance. It identifies the impact of China on global ocean governance and indicates the development and reforms in the global governance system. China enacted the China Ocean Agenda 21 for its strategy of ocean development. Thus, China is the object of study in this examination of empirical research that collects submissions from 2001 to 2020 related to marine environmental governance. The findings reveal that the extent to which China participates in such governance has considerably increased, and although the contribution of China’s submissions is still in development, its role in the IMO is no longer merely that of a follower, and the efforts of the country have had a positive influence on the IMO’s marine environmental regulatory governance, including its legal instruments.