International Trade Law Commons^™

From Doing Business To B-Ready: World Bank’S New Rankings Represent A Rebrand, Not A Revamp, Fernanda G. Nicola, Dhaisy Paredes Guzman

Popular Media

In 2021, the World Bank shut down one of its flagship projects: the Doing Business index, a global ranking system that measured how easy it was to start and run a business in 190 countries. It followed an independent investigation that found World Bank officials had manipulated the rankings to favor powerful countries, including China and Saudi Arabia. The scandal raised serious concerns about the use of global benchmarks to shape development policy. Now, the Bank is trying again. In October 2024, it launched its newest flagship report, Business Ready. The 2025 spring meeting of the World Bank and its …

Prospects Of The Sphere Of Tourism In The Conditions Of Uzbekistan’S Accession To The World Trade Organization: Analytical Review, Surayyo Usmanova

Review of law sciences

The prospects of the admission of Uzbekistan as a World Trade Organization’s member creates a need for a comprehensive analysis of future membership to this organization. The research is devoted to the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) analysis of issues related to the prospects for signing, which plays an important role in further integrating of the Republic of Uzbekistan into the global community and contributes to many debates. The researcher examined the experience of some WTO member states and elaborated recommendations on regulation of tourism services, admission of foreign tourist companies to the national market …

The Cape Town Convention's International Registry: Decoding The Secrets Of Success In Global Electronic Commerce, Jane K. Winn

Articles

The International Registry, established pursuant to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment, is a new global electronic commerce system for recording and establishing the relative priority of interests in aircraft equipment. Other examples of global electronic commerce systems include the airline computer reservation system, the SWIFT financial network, and payment card networks.

The International Registry may be the most successful global electronic commerce system ever built in terms of the speed with which it was implemented, its adoption rate, and the dearth of controversy surrounding its operation. The real "driver" of its success is demand for …

Why Does The Complainant Always Win At The Wto?: A Reputation-Based Theory Of Litigation At The World Trade Organization, Matthew C. Turk

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

World Trade Organization (WTO) litigation presents an empirical puzzle: complaining parties "win" close to 90 percent of cases, while standard theories of litigation predict a strong tendency towards a 50 percent plaintiff win-rate. This Article explains the high win-rate by examining the reputational costs and benefits of filing a case. The WTO's lack of centralized enforcement means that the consequence of a judgment is merely to disseminate information that alters a party's reputation for compliance with its trade obligations. Such a "reputational sanction" applies to both losing respondents and complainants. The result is that only cases with a very high …

Efficient Contracting Between Foreign Investors And Host States: Evidence From Stabilization Clauses, Sam Foster Halabi

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Bilateral investment treaties are agreements between sovereign states that give broad protections to investors and investments made within the jurisdiction of the other state. The prevailing view in the academy and practice is that developing countries sign bilateral investment treaties in order to reassure investors from developed states that their investments will be safe from changes in domestic law. Without these "credible commitments," investors would be deterred from making investments, depriving developing countries of foreign capital. This Article disputes that view by demonstrating that foreign investors and host states effectively contract around the risk of changes in the law. This …

Making Wto Sps Dispute Settlement Work: Challenges And Practical Solutions, Eric Gillman

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) represents an effort by the Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to balance competing interests in liberalizing trade, on one hand, and protecting human, animal, and plant life from risks posed by the free flow of goods on the other. SPS disputes center around a core question: Does the imported product at issue present a sufficiently serious threat to national health to warrant the imposition of trade-restrictive measures? Over twelve years and six disputes, panels and the Appellate Body (AB) have addressed this question by evaluating respondents' risk assessments. The …

Beyond Culture Vs. Commerce: Decentralizing Cultural Protection To Promote Diversity Through Trade, Sean A. Pager

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

For the past three decades, culture defenders and free traders have fought a pitched battle over global regulation of audiovisual industries, a collision of seemingly incompatible worldviews whose destructive repercussions policy-makers and scholars have struggled to contain. The battle has played out at multiple levels of international trade law, investment treaties, and UNESCO conventions. Now, the culture-trade war threatens to engulf e-commerce. Fortunately, there is a better way. The extraordinary flowering of Korean popular culture in recent decades—commonly known as the "Korean Wave"—can be traced directly to a set of decentralized policies enacted by South Korea's government in the 1990s. …

The Trade Litigant's Gauntlet: The Hanging Judge And The Teflon Tribunal, Jay Charles Campbell

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The two U.S. agencies charged with conducting antidumping investigations may justifiably be labeled a "hanging judge" and a "Teflon tribunal." The Department of Commerce (DOC) investigates whether foreign firms have engaged in "dumping" exports to the United States. Since assuming responsibility for dumping investigations in 1980, the DOC has found that over 90% of the firms it investigated were "guilty." Such one-sided results subject far too many foreign firms to antidumping duty orders - which impair their ability to sell to the U.S. market - and send the wrong message to the United States' trading partners. Because the U.S. antidumping …

More Than Best Friends: Expansion Of Global Law Firms Into The Indian Legal Market, Chris Vena

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Over the past half century, there has been an accelerating trend towards liberalization in the legal services industry. International free trade agreements have sought to promote open markets for legal services. The United States, United Kingdom, many European countries, Australia, Japan, Russia, China, and Singapore have all opened their legal markets to foreign law firms. India is something of an anomaly in this regard. Although it has one of the world's largest economies and has benefited greatly from liberalization in many industries, India's legal industry remains closed. Competition for foreign capital with other developing nations, particularly China, makes this an …

The Revolving Door Of Emigration: The Economic Influences Of Remittances In Developing Countries, Laura L. Norris

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Economic incentives play an integral role in many individuals' choices to leave their country of origin. While a person may independently make the decision to migrate, some governments have developed extensive programs to promote the export of workers. Developing nations often initiate such programs for the purpose of acquiring additional sources of foreign exchange and external financing, as emigrants in transnational families can play a critical role in development through remittances. Remittances to developing countries totaled $325 billion in 2010, and they will likely continue to increase along with emigration. The following Comment considers the palpable contribution remittances have on …