Law Commons^™

Making Sanitary And Phytosanitary Agreement Work In Developing Countries Of Sub-Saharan Africa, Onesimus Kipchumba Murkomen

ExpressO

This paper traces the participation of sub-Saharan Countries in the development of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS) and examines the impact of the Agreement on trade in the region. It identifies the challenges faced by these countries in international norm setting and addresses the legal and structural challenges faced in the region. This paper further identifies the challenges faced by these countries which depend on agricultural products in dealing with the legal and regulatory regimes of developed countries which are complex and dynamic. It is meant to address the challenges faced by these countries in …

Global Pharmaceutical Patent Law In Developing Countries- Amending Trips To Promote Access For All, Angela J. Anderson

ExpressO

This comment will analyze the need to amend and revise the current global pharmaceutical patent system under TRIPS to take into account the needs of developing countries and overall public health. This comment will emphasize that the current international trade rules, which although administered by the WTO, are dictated by developed country governments and powerful pharmaceutical companies, and therefore, without reform will further diminish the access of poor people in developing countries to vital medicines. Part II of this comment will provide a general overview of the international trade law governing patents on pharmaceuticals focusing specifically on the development of …

Comparative Advantage And Labor Protections In Free Trade Agreements: Making Labor Protections In Trade Agreements Practical And Effective, Michael E. Aleo

ExpressO

The tension between competitiveness in international trade and the improvement of living standards has become a central controversy in negotiating trade agreements. Under pressure from the labor rights movement over the course of the last twenty-five years, the United States has regularly advocated for the inclusion of labor standards in trade relationships. Generally, governments in developing countries resist the incorporation of labor protections in trade agreements because of a belief that labor protections diminish a nation’s competitiveness in the international marketplace. Labor rights advocates, particularly in the United States, have fought for the inclusion of labor rights in trade agreements …

Transparency In International Commercial Arbitration, Catherine A. Rogers

Journal Articles

Scholars have long been making the case for expanding transparency in the international commercial arbitration system, but recently these proposals have taken on a greater sense of urgency and an apparent willingness to forcibly impose transparency reforms on unwilling parties. These new transparency advocates exhort the general public's stakehold in many issues being arbitrated, which they contend necessitates transparency reforms, including compulsory publication of international commercial arbitration awards.

In this symposium essay, I begin by developing a definition of transparency in the adjucatory setting, and conceptually distinguishing from other concepts, like "public access" and "disclosure," which are often improperly treated …

Public Health At Risk: A Us Free Trade Agreement Could Threaten Access To Medicines In Thailand, Jakkrit Kuanpoth, Gawain Kripke, Stephanie Weinberg

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

Even though the world faces the threat of potential new epidemics like avian influenza, the effects of trade rules on public health attract little attention. Governments recently reaffirmed their commitment to meet the Millennium Development Goals which include combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases, yet little attention is given to the implications of United States Free Trade Agreements (US FTAs) with developing countries such as Thailand, for access to affordable medicines to treat those diseases. These FTAs do much more than regulate tariffs for cross-border trade in goods and services: they change the rules of intellectual property protection in …

Canadian Softwood Lumber And “Free Trade” Under Nafta, Sydney M. Cone Iii

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Environmental Law: 2006 Annual Report, Jane C. Luxton, Lakshman Guruswamy, Kevin L. Doran

Publications

No abstract provided.

Counterfeit Drugs: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

When I chose the title, Counterfeit Drugs: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, some of my colleagues at this symposium blanched. They understood counterfeit drugs as Bad and Ugly, but resisted categorizing any counterfeit drug as Good. This article is intended to be provocative, challenging some of the conventional wisdom concerning counterfeit drugs.

We start with the fact that reports about the scope of pharmaceutical counterfeiting are remarkably anecdotal rather than empirical. As a professor once chided me, the plural of anecdote is not data. The FDA and the WHO must undertake comprehensive market surveillance to establish the true …

Constructing International Law In The East Indian Seas: Property, Sovereignty, Commerce And War In Hugo Grotius' De Iure Praedae - The Law Of Prize And Booty, Or On How To Distinguish Merchants From Pirates, Ileana Porras

Articles

No abstract provided.

The (Neglected) Employment Dimension Of The World Trade Organization, Steve Charnovitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

A key assumption underlying the World Trade Organization (WTO) is that its program of trade negotiations will strengthen the world economy and lead to more trade, investment, employment and income growth throughout the world. In the author's view, the WTO truly is strengthening the world economy and promoting trade and investment in many parts of the world. Yet the rest of the thesis is debatable. Is it necessarily true that the WTO and the trade negotiations it sponsors are increasing employment and income growth throughout the world? Indeed, even aggregating the world economy into one planetary unit, one wonders whether …

Trade, Law And Product Complexity, Katharina Pistor, Daniel Berkowitz, Johannes Moenius

Faculty Scholarship

How does the quality of national institutions that enforce the rule of law influence international trade? Anderson and Marcouiller argue that bad institutions located in the importer’s country deter international trade because they enable economic predators to steal and extort rents at the importer’s border. We complement this research and show how good institutions located in the exporter’s country enhance international trade, in particular, trade in complex products whose characteristics are difficult to fully specify in a contract. We argue that both exporter and importer institutions affect international as well as domestic transaction costs in complex and simple product markets. …