Law Commons^™

The New Poor At Our Gates: Global Justice Implications For International Trade And Tax Law, Ilan Benshalom

Faculty Working Papers

The Article explains why international trade and tax arrangements should advance global wealth redistribution in a world of enhanced economic integration. Despite the indisputable importance of global poverty and inequality, contemporary political philosophy stagnates over the controversy of whether distributive justice obligations should extend beyond the political framework of the nation state. This stagnation results from the difficulty of reconciling liberal impartiality with notions of state sovereignty and accountability. The Article offers an alternative approach that bypasses the controversy of the current debate. It argues that international trade results in relational distributive duties when domestic parties engage in transactions with …

The European Court’S Political Power Across Time And Space, Karen Alter

Faculty Working Papers

This article extracts from Alter's larger body of work insights on how the political and social context shapes the ECJ's political power and influence. Part I considers how the political context facilitated the constitutionalization of the European legal system. Part II considers how the political context helps determine where and when the current ECJ influences European politics. Part III draws lessons from the ECJ's experience, speculating on how the European context in specific allowed the ECJ to become such an exceptional international court. Part IV lays out a research agenda to investigate the larger question of how social support shapes …

Taiwan's Fair Trade Act: Achieving The Right Balance Symposium On Competition Law And Policy In Developing Countries, Pijan Wu, Caroline Thomas

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Adopting competition laws is part-and-parcel of a global trend. Indeed, it is striking to see how many countries first implemented competition laws within the last twenty-five years. In 2000, Frederic Jenny commented that "today between 80 and 100 countries have a competition law or are in the process of adopting one whereas ten years ago no more than 50 countries had such a law." This compares to less than ten countries in 1960. Promulgated by a Presidential Order on February 4, 1991 and coming into force one year thereafter, Taiwan's Fair Trade Act ("FTA") must be interpreted in this context. …

Bilateralism Under The World Trade Organization, Y.S. Lee

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The establishment of the World Trade Organization ("WTO"), which replaced the five decades of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ("GATT") regime,' has significantly reinforced multilateral control over international trade on a global scale. As of October 2005, membership in the WTO has reached 148 nations, including the majority of former Soviet bloc and other communist countries,2 making the WTO the "United Nations of International Trade.",3 WTO disciplines have significant impact on world trade today; they have been enforced by the monitoring activities of various WTO bodies and by strengthened dispute resolution mechanisms. In addition, a significant number of …

Bilateral Investment Treaties And The Possibility Of A Multilateral Framework On Investment At The Wto: Are Poor Economies Caught In Between, Victor Mosoti

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The increased Foreign Direct Investment ("FDI") flows in the past few years have strengthened the belief among many developing countries, especially African countries, that such FDI flows could help in reducing the resource, technology and foreign exchange gaps that constrain their economic development. As a result, many developing countries have beendiligently working to attract foreign investment, for which these countries give some of the highest returns; in the process, these countries make concessions that they would have found unthinkable in the past, when autarchic economic policies were prevalent. For example, due to the liberalization of capital accounts, a foreign investor …

Injury Investigations In "Material Retardation" Antidumping Cases, Prakash Narayanan

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Despite the criticisms of economists to antidumping measures, they continue to be the most often used trade remedy measure. A new trend that may be observed is the use of the "material retardation" standard of injury to demonstrate injury to domestic industry that is one of the requirements for imposing antidumping duty. It is essential to be wary of this trend as unlike the other two types of injury, the WTO lacks specific guidelines for the use of this standard. The general rules in the Antidumping Agreement are unsuitable for the situations where the material retardation standard is relevant, and …

Test Of Multilateralism In International Trade: U.S. Steel Safeguards, Y.S. Lee

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The highly publicized safeguard measures applied by the United States to an array of steel products in 2002 became one of the biggest and most controversial trade disputes in recent history. Virtually all major trading nations in the world, including the European Community, Japan , China , Brazil , Korea , New Zealand , Switzerland and Norway , were the direct parties to this dispute with the United States . The contentious legal grounds of the U.S. safeguard measures, as well as the lack of adequate consultations between the United States and its trading counterparts, have brought the international community …

Trips' Rebound: An Historical Analysis Of How The Trips Agreement Can Ricochet Back Against The United States, Donald P. Harris

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Recently, scholars and commentators around the world have reexamined the role intellectual property rights (IPRs) play in hindering or helping developing countries. These scholars have questioned the doctrine the IPRs help developing countries by promoting economic development, increasing foreign direct investment, stimulating domestic innovation, and improving access to new technologies, and have concluded that imposing "Western-styled" intellectual property regimes (e.g., the U.S. patent regime) on developing countries harms those countries. In particular, such regimes fail to bring any of the purported benefits, while they impose many costs, including preventing people from obtaining life-saving drugs. This Article argues that it is …

The Spirit Of Trips And The Importation Of Medicines Made Under Compulsory License After The August 2003 Trips Council Agreement, Jessica J. Fayerman

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement has changed prospects for access to necessary medications in the developing world. The use of compulsory licensing for pharmaceutical products embodied in Article 31 of TRIPS has been a contentious issue. Prior to 2003, countries with no manufacturing capacity of their own were not allowed to import medicines made under compulsory license, rendering the protections of Article 31 of little use to them. The 2003 Motta Agreement changed this. This expansion of the compulsory licensing power is both an impractical solution and it dilutes the premises upon which TRIPS was originally …

Changing Notions Of Sovereignty And Federalism In The International Economic System: A Reassessment Of Wto Regulation Of Federal States And The Regional And Local Governments Within Their Territories, Edward T. Hayes

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

International trade liberalization increasingly addresses disciplines which fall within the constitutional competence of regional and local governments. Traditional notions of nation/state sovereignty are evolving to recognize the importance of regional and local actors on the international economic scene. The ongoing evolution of international trade and sovereignty incresasingly places regional and local governments in a unique position to influence world trade, positively and negatively.

This article explores the manner in which the World Trade Organization attempts to regulate regional and local behavior. Specifically, this Article explores the inherent constitutional tension and resulting ambiguities in the WTO's effort to regulate regional and …

Trade Protectionism And Environmental Regulations: The New Nontariff Barriers, C. Ford Runge

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This article reviews some economic and legal aspects of the growing role of environmental, health, and safety regulations operating as disguised barriers to trade. While this has always been a recognized problem in trade policy, the issue has gained new force as environmental policies move to the forefront of many national agendas. Because environmental standards have a growing national constituency, they are especially attractive candidates for disguised protectionism. International distinctions in the tolerable level of environmental risks are created because the weight attached to environmental standards tends to vary with the income levels of different countries. Incentives are created to …

United States Coastwise Trading Restrictions: A Comparison Of Recent Customs Service Rulings With The Legislative Purpose Of The Jones Act And The Demands Of A Global Economy, Robert L. Mcgeorge

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Fierce policy disputes are inevitable whenever two basic, widely-accepted principles intersect in a situation where one must prevail and the other give way. In the maritime field, these disputes occur whenever a nation-state is forced to choose between promoting free and open trade in maritime services or protecting its domestic merchant marine. The clash of these policies has generated vigorous debates in the United States on a wide variety of maritime issues (e.g., cargo preference requirements, operating and construction differential subsidies, vessel construction loan guarantee programs and whether to retaliate against foreign countries' attempts to reserve import and export trades …

The Controls On The Transfrontier Movement Of Hazardous Waste From Developed To Developing Nations: The Goal Of A "Level Playing Field", Michelle M. Vilcheck

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In the 1970s, the United States Congress began passing national environmental legislation. One reason for such legislation was to "level the playing field" among the fifty states so that economic advantage did not accrue to one state at the expense of environmental quality and public health.' The world now faces a similar need for environmental legislation on an international level. Environmental laws of individual nations have become more and more divergent as developed countries, such as the United States, enact tougher environmental laws, while less developed nations fail to enact any environmental regulations. The variant standards of these environmental laws …

Worker Rights In The Post-1992 European Communities: What "Social Europe" Means To United States-Based Multinational Employers, Donald C. Jr. Dowling

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The United States media have extensively covered the trade angle of the European Communities [EC] program to create a "single market" by the end of 1992. The media coverage has spotlighted the benefits the EC market will offer multinational corporations, such as the market's "economies of scale" and its 320 million consumer block. By now this 1992 news has sunk in, and many United States corporations are assessing how they might exploit the soon-to-be unified EC market.

Gatt Dispute Settlements: A New Beginning In International And U.S. Trade Law, Donald E. Dekieffer

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Although the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)' has been in existence for over two decades, a workable system has only recently developed for resolving disputes between contracting parties. Since its inception, the GATT has been designed to promote the grad- ual dissolution of trade barriers between the major mercantile countries of the world.2 In its early years, the GATT approached this ambitious goal solely through irregular negotiating "rounds" at which the Con- tracting Parties (the nations signatory to the GATT) mutually agreed to reduce their tariff barriers. There was little attempt to develop an effec- tive enforcement mechanism …