Detlev Vagts on the History of IEL

For a wonderful tour d'horizon of the history of international economic law, albeit through the lens of the AJIL, see Detlev Vagts article at 100 AJIL 769 (October 2006).  Here is the conclusion:

Looking back on the relationship between international economic law and the Journal, one wonders why it was given so little coverage until so very recently. The first hypothesis is that not much was really going on in the field. Before 1914, the flows of economic factors were largely unregulated. The dramatic events in international economic relations occurred largely in what we would now call the Third World--expropriations, defaults, exclusion of foreigners. They seemed a bit exotic and peripheral to American lawyers. The interwar period saw a major increase in national restrictions but very little effective response at the international level. Nevertheless, quite a few private international law cases stemmed from these restraints. The other explanation may be that the background and interests of Journal editors caused them to overlook significant developments in this field. The early editors focused on questions of war and peace and the international rule of law.

Although many of them represented corporations, they did little work in the economic field. Tariff controversies were the preserve of a specialized bar, as was intellectual property. The general mind-set of lawyers, including academics, was much less influenced by economic ideas than in the twenty-first century. Arthur Nussbaum was almost alone in connecting law and economics. Nobody would have speculated as to whether the Drago doctrine raised the cost of capital to developing countries. Thus, it was not until well after the post-1945 creation of the great multinational economic institutions that the American Journal of International Law developed the interest in international economic law that we now consider appropriate.