Global Value Chain Law: A Socio-Legal Approach to the Constitution of Connectivity, Contracts and Corporations

Ongoing tensions concerning cross-border supplies of medical equipment and vaccines and accusations of “vaccine nationalism” illustrates the pivotal importance of global value chains (GVCs). Some 80% of global trade unfolds within GVCs making them a vital part of the infrastructure of global society and a central institutional framework for the creation and distribution of norms, power, and wealth. Legal scholarship has tentatively started to recognise the existence of GVCs. The law, however, still struggles with the implications of the creation of value in multi-contextual and multijurisdictional networks. In order to adequately capture GVCs, the project develops an alternative sociolegal
conceptuality and a new methodological approach. The projects departs from an epistemological shift from the corporate law of multinational companies to GVC Law. This implies a shift of focus from corporations as the units of
GVCs to the relational aspect, i.e., the contracts connecting corporations. Conceptually, the objective is to develop a legal concept of GVCs. This implies both an “is” and an “ought”, i.e., a sociological understanding of the factually existing elements of GVC Law, as well as the development of a normbased legal framework. Methodologically, the project provides a novel historical-sociology of law framework.