Book review - Tatiana Alexeeva & Pierangelo Catalano (eds) Pravovye aspekty BRIKS = Legal aspects of BRICS = Aspetti giuridici del BRICS

• Date: 16 August 2019
• Published date: 16 August 2019

BOOK REVIEW

Tatiana Alexeeva & Pierangelo Catalano (eds)

Pravovye aspekty BRIKS = Legal aspects of BRICS = Aspetti giuridici del BRICS

(Izdatel’stvo Politechniceskogo universiteta, Sankt-Petersburg2011, pp 240)

Reviewed by SALVATORE MANCUSO

Centre for Comparative Law in Africa, University of Cape Town

This trilingual volume was edited by TatianaAlexeeva, Dean of the Faculty

of Law of the St Petersburg branch of the National Research University

(‘Business High School’) and Pierangelo Catalano, head of the research unit

‘Giorgio La Pira’ of CNR-University of Rome (‘La Sapienza’). It is a

collation of all the papers presented by academic scholars from the BRICS

countries and Italy at the St Petersburg seminar in September 2011.As stated

by the organisers, the seminar dealt with four themes:

i. Legal bases of the functioning of BRICS: international law and ius

romanum commune;

ii. BRICS and harmonisation of legal regulation of environmental protec-

tion;

iii. BRICS and harmonisation of legal regulation of the energy sector; and

iv. BRICS and harmonisation of legal regulation of trade and f‌inances.

The main BRICS foundations and objectives are summarised in the

introduction by Pierangelo Catalano, titled ‘Main objectives and foundations

of BRICS — Origins and history’. The natural foundations of BRICS,

emerging from the Yekaterinburg Joint Statement (16 June 2009) and from

the Sanya Declaration (14–15 April 2011), lie in the fact that Brazil, Russia,

India, China and South Africa hold a total population of around 3 billion

people and that these countries play a fundamental role in international

relations. Based on such observations and moving from a historical perspec-

tive overcoming the outcome of the Second World War, the BRICS

countries call for reform of the United Nations, with particular reference to

its Security Council, and push for reform of the IMF too. Considering such

demands from the Roman law perspective, they emphasise the need to set up

an auctoritas publica universalis aimed at stopping violations to the nations’

sovereignty, and at f‌ighting international usury realised through the so-called

foreign debt.

Pierangelo Catalano then observes how, from the BRICS experience,

environmental aspects (ie territorial expansion, demographic development,

economic consistency) must be considered in the light of ‘the legal history of

the great spaces, with the continuity of at least two great empires’, since the

heritage of the Middle Empire has devolved upon China, while that of the

Roman Empire survives in the Russian concept of the ‘Third Rome’ and in

the Brazilian idea of the ‘Fifth Empire’. Catalano hopes that through BRICS

enforcement it would be possible to take advantage of history and restore the

ius gentium, whose validity goes beyond agreements, being based upon the

f‌ides.

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(2014) 1(1) Journal of Comparative Law in Africa 108

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