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Full-Text Articles in Law
Wto Dispute Settlement: Can We Go Back Again?, Rachel Brewster
Wto Dispute Settlement: Can We Go Back Again?, Rachel Brewster
Faculty Scholarship
The world's twenty-year experiment with a rule-based international trading order is most likely ending. Trade wars are raging again for the first time in two decades as World Trade Organization (WTO) members unilaterally impose and counterimpose sanctions. In Geneva, the WTO Appellate Body, whose existence is essential to the functioning of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), is on a trajectory to shut down in December 2020. For all the fireworks, however, many commentators retain an optimism that the recent events will be a passing phase and that the world will return to a more law-oriented trading system after the …
Us-Cool Retaliation: The Wto’S Article 22.6 Arbitration, Chad P. Bown, Rachel Brewster
Us-Cool Retaliation: The Wto’S Article 22.6 Arbitration, Chad P. Bown, Rachel Brewster
Faculty Scholarship
This paper examines the World Trade Organization’s Article 22.6 arbitration report on the dispute over the United States’ country of origin labeling (US–COOL) regulation for meat products. At prior phases of the legal process, a WTO Panel and the Appellate Body had sided with Canada and Mexico by finding that the US regulation had negatively affected their exports of livestock – cattle and hogs – to the US market. The arbitrators authorized Canada and Mexico to retaliate by over $1 billion against US exports – the second largest authorized retaliation on record and only the twelfth WTO dispute to reach …
Supplying Compliance: Why And When The United States Complies With Wto Rulings, Rachel Brewster, Adam Chilton
Supplying Compliance: Why And When The United States Complies With Wto Rulings, Rachel Brewster, Adam Chilton
Faculty Scholarship
In studies of compliance with international law, the focus is usually on the “demand side” – that is, how to increase the pressure on the state to comply. Less attention has been paid, however, to the consequences of the “supply side” – who within the state is responsible for the compliance. This Article is the first study to systematically address the issue of how different actors within the United States government alter national policy in response to the violations of international law. The Article does so by examining cases initiated under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). …
Pricing Compliance: When Formal Remedies Displace Reputational Sanctions, Rachel Brewster
Pricing Compliance: When Formal Remedies Displace Reputational Sanctions, Rachel Brewster
Faculty Scholarship
The conventional wisdom in international law is that dispute resolution institutions sharpen the reputational costs to states. This article challenges this understanding by examining how the inclusion of dispute resolution tribunals and remedy regimes can alter reputational analysis by shifting the audience¹s understanding of how mandatory a treaty's substantive obligations are. Drawing on the distinction between prices and sanctions, this article contests the assumption that the introduction of a remedy regime in international agreements will regularly increase compliance with the treaty¹s substantive terms. Instead, some remedy regimes may 'price' deviations from the treaty¹s terms and thereby facilitate breaches of the …
The Surprising Benefits To Developing Countries Of Linking International Trade And Intellectual Property, Rachel Brewster
The Surprising Benefits To Developing Countries Of Linking International Trade And Intellectual Property, Rachel Brewster
Faculty Scholarship
The World Trade Organization's Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement is controversial, requiring WTO members to establish a host of domestic institutions to support intellectual property rights, including substantive laws creating rights and a host of enforcement procedures. Trade scholars and development advocates frequently criticize the agreement as economically harmful to developing countries. This Article does not argue that the TRIPS Agreement is beneficial for developing states, but highlights how the agreement has produced some surprising benefits over the last decade and a half. First, the TRIPS Agreement's requirement that developing states make the domestic enforcement of intellectual property rules …
The Remedy Gap: Institutional Design, Retaliation, And Trade Law Enforcement, Rachel Brewster
The Remedy Gap: Institutional Design, Retaliation, And Trade Law Enforcement, Rachel Brewster
Faculty Scholarship
One of the major innovations of the World Trade Organization’s (“WTO”) Dispute Settlement Understanding (“DSU”) is the regulation of sanctions in response to violations of trade law. The DSU requires governments to receive multilateral approval before suspending trade concessions and limits the extent of retaliation to prospective damages. In addition, the DSU permits governments to impose only conditional sanctions: sanctions for violations that continue after the dispute resolution process is complete. This enforcement regime creates a remedy gap: governments cannot respond, even to obvious breaches, until the end of the dispute resolution process (and then only to the extent of …
Rule-Based Dispute Resolution In International Trade Law, Rachel Brewster
Rule-Based Dispute Resolution In International Trade Law, Rachel Brewster
Faculty Scholarship
Why does the United States ever prefer to settle disputes under a system of rules rather than a system of negotiations? Powerful states are advantaged by negotiation-based approaches to settling disagreements because they have the resources to resolve individual disputes on favorable terms. By contrast, rule-based dispute resolution advantages weak states as a means to hold powerful states to the terms of their agreements. Then why did the United States want a rule-based system to settle international disputes in the WTO? To answer this question, we have to understand domestic politics as well as international politics. International constraints, particularly international …