International Legal Ordering to Achieve International Goals: A Discourse Through the U.S. and China's Foreign Relations Law

The international legal order is facing both short-term and long-term challenges. The U.S. and China, as two leading economies in the world, have responsibilities and interests to take the initiatives in addressing these shared challenges, be it international security, extreme poverty, global sustainability, and connectivity, or disruptive technologies. As Foreign Relations Laws inform how nations interact with the world, how the U.S. and China’s Foreign Relations Laws facilitate the development of the international legal order calls for analysis. This paper proposes the formulation of indicia with three-pronged evaluative criteria, to consider both China’s newly introduced Foreign Relations Law 2023, as well as the more long- standing U.S. foreign relations framework. This is done against the backdrop of a comparative approach to evaluating both the U.S. and China’s constitutional and institutional structure of foreign relations and decision-making processes. This paper provides scholars, practitioners, and policy makers with analytical insights into how States, through their Foreign Relations Laws, can facilitate the development of the international legal order for the benefit of mankind.