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Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Article 20 AfCFTA establishes a Dispute Settlement Mechanism, the Protocol on Rules and Procedures on the Settlement of Disputes (‘the AfCFTA DSM Protocol’; ‘Protocol’) and a Dispute Settlement Body (‘DSB’) for resolving disputes between State Parties. The AfCFTA dispute settlement mechanism is a central element of the AfCFTA as it provides security and predictability to the regional trading system (Art 4 AfCFTA-DSM Protocol). The AfCFTA dispute settlement mechanism will ‘preserve the rights and obligations of State Parties under the Agreement and clarify the existing provisions of the Agreement in accordance with customary rules of interpretation of public international law’ (Art …

Enemy At The Gates: Online Dispute Resolution In The Time Of Covid-19, Justin Monahan

Law in a Post-Pandemic World

At one time, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) was considered the future of dispute resolution. With the arrival of COVID-19, the future has rushed up to meet us. Even before the pandemic, the benefits of ODR—convenience, comfort, efficiency, and more equal power distribution—were gradually increasing its popularity. But the arrival of COVID-19 has caused this popularity to spike, transforming ODR from a convenient novelty into an absolute necessity for dispute resolution.

But ODR is subject to the limitations of its online platform. Dispute resolution methods may not function online the same way they do in person. With this difference of function …