Shariah governance, contractual autonomy, and World Trade Organization commercial contracts
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) legal order increasingly intersects with hybrid contractual regimes shaped by Shariah governance, sustainability imperatives, and global investment law. This article argues that the WTO’s legitimacy crisis is partly rooted in its neglect of contractual governance—the normative layer where trade commitments are designed, implemented, and contested (Sacerdoti & de Stefano, 2025). This neglect has significant doctrinal consequences: WTO disciplines remain anchored in state-to-state adjudication, while contractual mechanisms that transmit and recalibrate trade norms across jurisdictions are largely overlooked (Basedow, 2024). Through an analysis of Saudi Vision 2030 giga-projects, the study advances structured pluralism as an interpretive framework for coherence within WTO law. It demonstrates how Shariah fairness, WTO legality, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) obligations interact to reshape contractual autonomy and generate new modes of transnational regulation. The findings show that sukuk-financed procurement and ESG-linked infrastructure agreements expose systemic blind spots in subsidy rules, most favored nation (MFN) obligations, and the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT)/Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) frameworks. Recognizing contracts as governance instruments would enable the WTO to align doctrine with pluralist commercial practice, facilitating doctrinal renewal while strengthening the legitimacy and effectiveness of the multilateral trading order.
DOI: 10.22495/clgrv8i2p14
Author: Ali Salem Ali Al-Marri
Institution: King Faisal University
Language: English
Topic: World Trade Organization Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7156995805