The Right to be Free from Economic Coercion

This article seeks to determine if there is a fundamental right of states to be free from economic coercion, against the background of international law permitting economic coercion as a means for its own implementation. After defining coercion and other cognate terms, the article surveys the limits to (economic) countermeasures and (economic) sanctions, and determines that any ‘sphere of economic freedom’ of states is essentially a relative concept, without an irreducible core. Public international law does not currently establish a fundamental right of states to be free from economic coercion—though one should probably be established.