Abstract

This paper aims at examining some of the effects indirectly produced by the current economic crisis on several general normative trends, which were typical of the traditional international legal order. After the introduction, devoted to the main economic causes of the crisis (above all, the progressive development of global financial activities during the last thirty years, the growing and now intolerable inequalities between the rich and the poor of the world, etc.), the author considers the effects concerning: a) the new features assumed by cosmopolitanism as a normative theory of justice; b) the peculiar role performed by some economic organizations in the interest of the world system 'as a whole'; c) the new relationship between States and individuals in the existing democracies; d) the different and concurring modalities for the conduct of an humanitarian intervention abroad; e) the normative 'supremacy' of the International Community due to the existence of "erga omnes" obligations of States.