Law Commons^™

Toward An Identity Theory Of International Organizations, Sungjoon Cho

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Conventional international relations (IR) theorists, such as realists, neo-functionalists or regime theorists, view international organizations (IOs) as passive tools with which to achieve certain goals. Although an IO may facilitate inter-state cooperation and reduce transaction costs, it does not have a life of its own. Therefore, conventional IR theorists focus mostly on the creation of an IO and inter-state cooperation leading up to the creation. As a result, an IO's institutional change remains rather an “under-studied” and “under-theorized” issue in the conventional international relations (IR) framework.

Granted, conventional IR theories may provide useful insights on an inter-national dynamic among creators …

The Problem With Unpaid Work, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

This article examines the problems with a social norm that assumes women should shoulder a disproportionate amount of unpaid family work. It evaluates the most recent empirical data which suggests that women continue to do substantially more unpaid work than men, and men continue to do substantially more paid work than women. It then briefly reviews two standard explanations for where this gendered division of work may come from, biological inclination and/or systems of male dominance. It suggests that neither of these traditional explanations have given adequate consideration to the normative question begged by the extant division of labor. Is …

Toward A New Economic Constitution: Judicial Disciplines On Trade Politics, Sungjoon Cho

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This article first observes that protectionism is an icon of trade politics and thus likely to gather fresh momentum as a domestic election approaches. The paper then problematizes protectionism beyond mere seasonal election politics by revealing its fatal pathologies both to the United States and to the rest of the world. Protectionism basically caters to the special interest at the expense of the larger public interest, which may be coined as a Madisonian constitutional failure. It also deviates from global trading norms, which the United States hypocritically continues to preach adherence to for the rest of the world. This double …

Competition Law And The Wto: Rethinking The Relationship, David J. Gerber

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This essay identifies obstacles to the inclusion of a competition law regime in the WTO and suggests changes that are likely to be necessary if competition law is to become an effective part of the WTO. Two obstacles have impeded inclusion of competition law in the WTO's legal regime and are likely to continue to do so. They are (i) a lack of confidence that the norms, practices and procedures of the WTO rest on a robust conception of community and (ii) uncertainty and concern about what form of competition law might be included and what its role in the …