In the global arena, the cooperation between the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – covers around 42% of the world population and some of the world’s most dynamic emerging economies. Initially, the BRICS were suggested as an idea and later have been welcomed as a new addition to the global governance debate of the future. It has held already ten consecutive Summits of Heads of State plus a large number of meetings at the ministerial level. It qualifies itself as a “cooperation and dialogue” platform but has nonetheless signed a number of binding treaties and notably established the New Development Bank (NDB) as a permanent institution headquartered in Shanghai (China). Their cooperation has also met with resistance, criticism and problems caused by the overall complexity of global affairs in a rapidly changing world. Their diversity and remote location has also been raised as an obstacle for their successful cooperation and ability to play an active part in global governance in the 21st century. Their main challenge lies thus in the ability to overcome their differences and make a difference in designing the future global political and economic world order. Against the backdrop of the global governance debate, the present paper therefore ask whether the BRICS cooperation constitutes a novel model of regionalism with multilateral aspirations and what role law and, notably, the “rule of law” can play in this important task. This includes a discussion to what extent its cooperation needs to be upgraded in legal and institutional terms and possibly proceed from cooperation via consolidation to codification of its most important sources of global law.