International Trade Law Commons^™

The Life Of Arbitration Law Has Been Experience, Not Logic: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, And The Federal Arbitration Act, William F. Fox, Ylli Dautaj

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Over the past 50 years, the international business community has settled on the device of international commercial arbitration to resolve the overwhelming number of disputes that arise in their commercial agreements. One reason is that many business people are suspicious of the domestic courts of many host countries and have always sought the comfort of a neutral forum. Arbitration is neutral (i.e., not tied directly to any particular domestic legal system), efficient and confidential. Much of this evolution has been triggered by events in the United States-in particular a long series of United States Supreme Court decisions that ended the …

Encouraging Food Safety Standard Negotiations In The One-Belt-One-Road Initiative, Yi Seul Kim

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Participation and attendance in food safety negotiations such as Codex meetings are of critical importance. Common problems have existed throughout history in the area of food safety standards and their formulation regulations. First, there is a lack of interest by the public. Second, the public becomes interested only after a food safety crisis. Consequences are two-fold: with lack of public interest, governments often do not allocate enough budget and resources. Then, when the government turns to face the problem with a sudden spike in public interest, it is often too late. The situation becomes more of a crisis management, rather …

Is Strict Reciprocity Required For Fair Trade?, Daniel C.K. Chow, Ian Sheldon

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The administration of Donald J. Trump has repeatedly claimed that reciprocity is required for "fair" trade. While this concept is not new in US political discourse, the Trump administration's insistence that strict or absolute reciprocity is required goes beyond any claims made by previous US administrations. By strict reciprocity, the United States means that all trade volumes and terms and conditions of trade must be mirror images of each other. As the United States has a trade deficit with all of its largest trading partners, the Trump administration claims that this is evidence of unfairness in trade harming the United …

An Empirical Study Of Dispute Resolution Clauses In International Supply Contracts, John F. Coyle, Christopher R. Drahozal

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

International transactions present unique legal risks. When a contract touches several different nations, a party may not know where it will be called upon to defend a lawsuit or, alternatively, which nation's law will be applied to resolve that dispute. To mitigate these risks, parties will often write dispute resolution provisions into their contracts. Arbitration clauses and forum selection clauses help to reduce uncertainty relating to the forum. Choice-of-law clauses help to reduce uncertainty as to the governing law. Over the past few decades, such provisions have become commonplace in international contracting. And yet there exist vanishingly few empirical studies …

Building Bridges: International Trade Law, Internet Governance, And The Regulation Of Data Flows, Neha Mishra

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The regulation of internet data flows touches upon various distinct disciplines including internet governance and international trade law. In internet governance, three fundamental principles, namely, internet openness, internet security, and internet privacy apply to regulation of internet data flows. This Article argues that internet privacy and security, when implemented in a reasoned and transparent manner by different stakeholders, enable internet openness--thus, challenging the dominant perspective that cybersecurity and privacy requirements constrain the free flow of data. Further, this Article introduces a unique perspective by arguing that these three principles (notwithstanding their nonbinding nature) play an important role in applying trade …

Using The Wto To Facilitate The Paris Agreement: A Tripartite Approach, Antonia Eliason

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Climate change is the greatest threat humanity has faced, and its challenges can only be addressed through multilateral means. Lacking in accountability and enforcement mechanisms, however, the Paris Agreement requires additional support to achieve its full effect. Although not perfectly aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement, the WTO's multilateral framework could provide the necessary flexibilities to work toward meeting the Paris Agreement's targets. This Article proposes a novel three-pronged approach for refocusing the multilateral trading system and facilitating the Paris Agreement.

First, the preamble to the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization explicitly recognizes sustainable development as a …

Us And Eu Efforts To Combat International Money Laundering In The Art Market Are No Masterpiece, Timothy E. Burroughs

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Despite the lack of significant, tangible evidence of money laundering through fine art and antiquities dealers, the EU recently passed the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive adding art dealers to the list of businesses obligated to comply with record keeping and due diligence requirements. Shortly thereafter, a similar measure was proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives. However, one-size-fits-all unilateral regulations will fail to protect the fine art and antiquities industry and will place crippling burdens on many art market participants. Instead, soft law agreements, used for most international finance regulation, should be the main tool to establish international standards. This …

Emerging Market Economies And International Investment Law: Turkey-Africa Bilateral Investment Treaties, Uche E. Ofodile

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article offers a critical and penetrating insight into the bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between Turkey and countries in Africa. Since 2003, Turkey has concluded BITs with twenty-eight countries in Africa. This Article seeks answers to some very important questions. In the BITs between Turkey and countries in Africa, is Turkey merely conforming to the norms and standards established by Western countries, or is Turkey changing these norms in fundamental ways? Compared to BITs between Western nations and countries in Africa, are Turkey-Africa BITs more oriented towards sustainable development and, if so, in what respects? In what ways are emerging …

From Territorial To Universal-The Extraterritoriality Of Trademark Law And The Privatizing Of International Law, P. Sean Morris

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Legal doctrines, aided and abetted by interpretations of the courts, carry the force of law. The implication is that when courts settle matters, they often go beyond the scope of current intellectual property legislation. Furthermore, global problems in intellectual property may require the participation of private intellectual property rights owners to bring suit. This, in turn, often creates more problems due to the territorial, trans-territorial, and extraterritorial reach of the law, especially with respect private trademark rights. I explore this and other legal conundrums in this Article. The key concern addressed in the Article is how far trademark law is …

Exhaustion In The Service Of Progress, Ofer Tur-Sinai

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, an authorized sale of a patented item exhausts the patentee's rights with respect to that item, leaving the purchaser and subsequent owners free to use or resell it without fear of an infringement lawsuit. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Impression Products v. Lexmark International, which strengthened the exhaustion doctrine in various significant ways. The Court held that an authorized sale of a patented item exhausts all patent rights with respect to that item, regardless of any restrictions on use or resale the patentee purports to impose. The Court …

Fragmentation, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

A danger, an opportunity, passé, a cliché, destabilizing, empowering, destructive, creative: Depending on whom you ask, fragmentation has meant any and all of these for international law. The concept of fragmentation has been a mirror reflecting international lawyers’ perception of themselves, their field, and its prospects for the future.

This chapter chronicles fragmentation’s meanings over the past few decades. In particular, it focuses on the spreading fears of fragmentation around the millennium, how the fears were eventually repurposed, where, speculatively, those fear may have gone, and how and to what extent faith in international law was restored.

...And Trade, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

This short essay, part of a symposium on Gregory Shaffer’s Retooling Trade Agreements for Social Inclusion, argues that the normal science of trade law lacks the tools to confront trade law’s greatest current challenges. Instead, breaking out of trade law’s two-step politics, with its division of “growing the pie” and distributing its slices, and responding to new challenges of climate change, the digital economy, and artificial intelligence will require a new politics built on and designed to build new shared narratives embodying new policy paradigms.

Interstitial Space Law, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

Conventionally, customary international law is developed through the actions and beliefs of nations. International treaties are interpreted, in part, by assessing how the parties to the treaty behave. This Article observes that these forms of uncodified international law—custom and subsequent treaty practice—are also developed through a nation’s reactions, or failures to react, to acts and beliefs that can be attributed to it. I call this “attributed lawmaking.”

Consider the new commercial space race. Innovators like SpaceX and Blue Origin seek a permissive legal environment. A Cold-War-era treaty does not seem adequately to address contemporary plans for space. The treaty does, …

Corporations And Sustainability, Beate Sjåfjell, Christopher Bruner

Scholarly Works

This chapter introduces the Handbook, providing an overview of its aims and structure, as well as the core research questions that the contributions to it collectively address. It discusses sustainability-related problems associated with the legal form of the corporation, and provides background on state-of-the-art research in natural sciences and other relevant fields that inform our understanding of sustainability. It concludes with specific research questions and a presentation of the Handbook’s structure.

Book Review: Global Lawmakers: International Organizations In The Crafting Of World Markets By Susan Block-Lieb And Terence C. Halliday, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

Susan Block-Lieb and Terence Halliday gradually build up an empirically grounded, meticulously realized argument that individual lawmakers matter. When one allows facts to inform theory rather than the other way around, the authors show, what becomes clear is that individual lawmakers are not just governmental delegates, but a whole variety of professionals, industry association representatives, and others with some stake in the lawmaking process. These actors work not just through formal processes, but also through an array of informal ones. Most importantly, their presence matters to the content of the legal norms that take hold around the world. The book …

The National Security Delegation Conundrum, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

In the past two years alone, Trump has claimed national security authority to unilaterally issue steel and aluminum tariffs under Section 232 and threaten the same on auto parts; to implement a travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries under the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA); to threaten Mexico with tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) if it didn’t do more to stop migration to the U.S.; to find funds for a border wall that Congress specifically chose not to support; to continue attacks under the 2001 Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF), originally passed to go after …

Peacekeeping Operations In West Africa: Mechanisms Of Cooperation Between The United Nations And Ecowas With The Case Studies Concerning The Crises In Liberia And The Gambia, Serigne Cheikh Modou Kara Cisse

Dissertations and Theses

The African continent has significantly suffered from a great number of civil wars and armed conflicts since the beginning of the independence era in late 1960s. On May 28, 1975, the creation of a regional The African continent has significantly suffered from a great number of civil wars and armed conflicts since organization in West Africa called the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) took place. The intent was to achieve "collective self-sufficiency" for its member states by building a full economic and trading union. In the late 1990s, the maintenance of peace and security in the region was …

The Vital Role Of The Wto Appellate Body In The Promotion Of Rule Of Law And International Cooperation: A Case Study, Padideh Ala'i

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The New Social Contracts In International Supply Chains, David Snyder

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article considers, from legal, practical, moral, and policy perspectives, Model Contract Clauses (MCCs) to protect the human rights of workers in international supply chains. The product of the ABA Business Law Section Working Group to Draft Human Rights Protections in International Supply Contracts, the MCCs are an effort to provide companies with carefully researched and well-drafted clauses to incorporate human rights policies into supply contracts (purchase orders, master vendor agreements, and the like). The Article discusses the impetus, goals, and strategies of the MCCs and explains the paradigm of the corporate, operational, and political landscape for which they are …

The Law And Politics Of Socially Inclusive Trade, Timothy Meyer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

American ambivalence toward international institutions is nothing new. In his farewell address, George Washington famously warned against foreign entanglements. After World War I, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, leaving the United States outside the formal post-war order it helped establish and neutering the new League of Nations. Throughout the late twentieth century, the United States refused to ratify multilateral agreements ranging from the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, to a host of human rights agreements. Nor did the dawn of the twenty-first century change the …

Building Toward The Rcep? Reflections On The Asean-China Fta, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Among the ASEAN’s external FTAs, the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) is ofgreat significance to both the ASEAN and China. The ACFTA was one of the earliest trade pactsconcluded by China. It is also part of the ASEAN’s broader push toward concluding FTAs outside themultilateral trading system, in line with the proliferation of regional trade pacts. This chapter willanalyze the following questions: what is the approach of the ACFTA? What are the implications ofthe ACFTA for the the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)? What nationalimplementation issues are involved with the ASEAN? The potential implications of the AHKFTA willbe explored. The …

How Do We Get Along? International Economic Law And The Nation-State, Gregory Shaffer

Michigan Law Review

Review of Dani Rodrik's Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy.

Fairness In Fcpa Enforcement: A Call For Self-Restraint And Transparency In Multijurisdictional Anti-Bribery Enforcement Actions, Jessie M. Reniere

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Asian View On The Ceta Investment Chapter, Locknie Hsu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement (CETA) has been completed and awaits ratification against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which includes five Asian parties among its signatories, has lost the support of the United States and its fate is uncertain as well. The CETA is significant for Asian countries given that one of its parties -- the EU -- has signalled strongly that it wishes to negotiate a number of free trade agreements in the Asian region. The agreement offers valuable insight into the thinking of the EU in terms of investment protection guarantees, its …

Sovereignty And Complex Interdependence: Some Surprising Indications Of Their Compatibility, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

Even as democratic sovereignty and globalization are increasingly seen as incompatible in theory, this chapter argues that, in some important realms, they are proving compatible in practice. As tariffs have fallen to negligible levels, trade agreements among rich countries have come to focus on reconciling regulatory differences. In many sectors, novel forms of cooperation have emerged that allow trade partners deliberately to investigate and learn from one another’s practices, eventually recognizing the equivalence of regimes that are not strictly identical — and in the process extending domestic political oversight to relations among states while often heightening domestic accountability. The emergent …

Burning Down The House? The Appellate Body In The Centre Of The Wto Crisis, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

In December 2019 the WTO Appellate Body (AB) will cease to operate unless the United States stops blocking new appointments. The US argues the AB has exceeded its mandate and has indicated it wants to ensure that the AB performs the role originally assigned to it in 1995. This paper discusses the Uruguay round negotiating history with the view to establish what “going back to 1995” entails. It concludes that this should not be difficult assuming a willingness of the WTO membership to seriously consider the US concerns and acceptance by the US of a commitment by the membership to …

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 …

The Law And Politics Of Socially Inclusive Trade, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Competition Enforcement, Trade And Global Governance: A Few Comments, Petros C. Mavroidis, Damien J. Neven

Faculty Scholarship

The debate on international antitrust has come from two perspectives. On the one hand, the trade community has emphasised the interface between trade policy and competition (policy and) enforcement. This interface, which was recognised from the outset of multilateral efforts to liberalise trade in what would become the GATT and eventually the WTO, focuses on the prospect that trade liberalisation through border instruments should not be undone by restrictive business practices (RBPs), placing a particular responsibility in this respect on competition enforcement. On the other hand, the antitrust community has emphasised the risk of inefficient enforcement when several jurisdictions can …

Twin Crises In The Wto, And No Obvious Way Out, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Pause for a moment. Assume that, by magic wand, the Trump Administration changes its attitude, and agrees to new appointments to the Appellate Body (AB). Have the WTO problems disappeared simply because a complete AB is now in place? Even if matters such as Rule 15 are addressed,1 the distinction between facts and law is clarified and a resolution is found to concerns regarding the AB overstepping of its mandate, we are left with the fact that new trade agreements are being routinely negotiated outside the confines of the WTO, leading enforcement to migrate elsewhere. Is the AB crisis simply …