International Trade Law Commons^™

Analytical Jurisprudence And The Concept Of Commercial Law, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Commercial lawyers working across borders know that globalization has changed commercial law. To think of commercial law as only the law of states is to have an inadequate understanding of the norms governing commercial transactions. Some have argued for a transnational conception of commercial law, but their grounds of justification have been unpersuasive, often grounded on claims about the common content among national legal systems. Legal positivism is a rich literature on the concept of a legal system and the validity conditions for rules in legal systems, but it has not been used to understand legal order outside or beyond …

Navigating The Turbulent Waters Connecting The World Trade Organization And Corporate Social Responsibility, Gustavo Ferreira Ribeiro

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper uses the metaphor of a fisherman's journey into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) "seas" to explore the relationship between them. It is intended to provide the reader with a basic understanding of this relationship. An argument can be made that the WTO and CSR waters are not connected at all: the WTO is an intergovernmental organization regulating rights and duties of its members (mainly states), while CSR concerns primarily non-governmental initiatives dealing with corporate behavior, such as voluntary codes of conduct and certification processes involving social and environmental standards. However, this paper explores …

Promises Of Accession: Reassessing The Trade Relationship Between Turkey And The European Union, Fernanda G. Nicola

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article reassesses the Turkey-European Union trade relationship in light of the doctrine of promissory estoppel. It argues that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Yedaş Tarim should have used more explicitly the doctrine of promissory estoppel as an equitable device to create liability for the potential detriment suffered by Turkey in relying on the promises made by Brussels. Through an overview of Turkey-European Union (E.U.) relations from the early 1950s until today, with particular attention to accession negotiations and the trade relationship between Turkey and the European Economic Community, this Article highlights the anomalous trade context that characterizes …

Private Import Safety Regulation And Transnational New Governance, Errol E. Meidinger

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 12 in Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy, Cary Coglianese, Adam M. Finkel & David Zaring, eds.

This paper examines the role of ‘private’ (non-governmental) regulatory programs in assuring the safety of imported products. Focusing particularly on food safety it argues that private regulatory institutions have great capacity to control safety hazards and to implement dynamic systems for detecting and correcting nascent risks. However, to establish the accountability and legitimacy relationships necessary for long-term effectiveness, private safety regulatory programs must devise new ways of incorporating and responding to the interests of developing country producers, laborers, …

Bringing Down The Walls: How Technology Is Being Used To Thwart Parallel Importers Amid The International Confusion Concerning Exhaustion Of Rights, Ryan L. Vinelli

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The note examines the tension between intellectual property rights and free trade, highlighting the conflict arising from market segmentation strategies employed by companies like Sony. It argues that the lack of a uniform international standard on the exhaustion of rights exacerbates this issue, suggesting that an international regime under the WTO could mitigate market segmentation and promote free trade.

Micro-Offsets And Macro-Transformation: An Inconvenient View Of Climate Change Justice, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Brooke A. Ackerly, Fred E. Forster

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We have been asked to examine climate change justice by discussing the methods of allocating the costs of addressing climate change among nations. Our analysis suggests that climate and justice goals cannot be achieved by better allocating the emissions reduction burdens of current carbon mitigation proposals — there may be no allocation of burdens using current approaches that achieves both climate and justice goals. Instead, achieving just the climate goal without exacerbating justice concerns, much less improving global justice, will require focusing on increasing well-being and inducing fundamental changes in development patterns to generate greater levels of well-being with reduced …

The Graying Of The American Manufacturing Economy: Gray Markets, Parallel Importation, And A Tort Law Approach, Joseph Karl Grant

Journal Publications

This Article examines the history of the gray market in the United States through an analysis of both the domestic legislative framework and judicial treatment of gray market goods, primarily under trademark and copyright law. Part I of this Article provides a general introduction into the structural factors that cause parallel importation. Part II begins a discussion of trademarked goods by looking at the purposes of trademark law. Part III starts by discussing the relevant doctrines and provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, which frame the gray market discussion. Part III concludes by examining the current debate and the …

Introduction: Symposium On Law, Entrepreneurship, And Economic Recovery, Anthony J. Luppino

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of The Taiwan Relations Act Of 1979 On Res Judicata And Collateral Estoppel With Respect To Taiwanese And Third-Country Parties In United States Courts, Michael Buxton Devine

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

President Jimmy Carter terminated diplomatic relations be- tween the United States and the Republic of China (the ROC) or Taiwan on January 1, 1979, and Congress enacted the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (the TRA), effective on April 10, 1979, in order to replace the former diplomatic relations. The question then arose as to whether United States courts must recognize and enforce judgments of Taiwanese courts with respect to third-country plaintiffs who have prevailed over Taiwanese defendants. If so, then such third-country plaintiffs would be able to rely on the principles of res judicata and collateral estoppel in United States …

On Law And The Transition To Market: The Case Of Egypt, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On the eve of independence from European colonialism, Egypt, like most other developing countries, undertook the project of de-linking itself from colonial economy by initiating domestic industrialization. The economic project known as Import Substitution Industrialization (“ISI”) was designed to liberate Egypt from raw commodity production--specifically, agricultural and mineral--servicing its previous colonial master, Great Britain. The engine of development would be an expanding public sector with nationalization and socialism as leitmotifs. In re-orienting the economy towards industrial production, Egypt hoped that the terms of trade with the international economy would significantly improve, thereby leading to an improvement in the living standards …

Asat-Isfaction: Customary International Law And The Regulation Of Anti-Satellite Weapons, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article asserts the thesis that customary international law (CIL), even in the absence of any new treaty, already provides a legal regime constraining the testing and use in combat of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons. This argument, if validated, is important for both legal and public policy considerations: the world (especially, but not only, the United States) has grown increasingly dependent upon satellites for the performance of a wide array of commercial and military functions. At the same time, because of this growing reliance (and hence vulnerability), interest has surged in developing novel systems for attacking a potential enemy’s satellites – …

Investing In Culture: Underwater Cultural Heritage And International Investment Law, Valentina S. Vadi

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Underwater cultural heritage (UCH), which includes evidence of past cultures preserved in shipwrecks, enables the relevant epistemic communities to open a window to the unknown past and enrich their understanding of history. Recent technologies have allowed the recovery of more and more shipwrecks by private actors who often retrieve materials from shipwrecks to sell them. Not all salvors conduct proper scientific inquiry, conserve artifacts, and publish the results of the research; more often, much of the salvaged material is sold and its cultural capital dispersed. Because states rarely have adequate funds to recover ancient shipwrecks and manage this material, however, …

Nafta Cross-Border Trucking: Mexico Retaliates After Congress Stops Mexican Trucks At The Border, Chad Macdonald

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entitles Mexican tractor-trailers to enter the U.S. to deliver cargo from Mexico. In spite of NAFTA, the U.S. has only allowed Mexican trucks to operate in the U.S. during a controversial demonstration project that granted U.S. operating licenses to a select number of Mexican trucks during the Bush administration. The dispute over NAFTA's cross-border trucking provisions climaxed on March 16, 2009, when Mexico imposed $2.4 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports in response to U.S. noncompliance.

This Note chronicles the U.S.-Mexico cross-border trucking dispute and argues that the U.S. should re-start a …

The Eu's Protectionism Problem, Meredith Kolsky Lewis

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Solitary Attempt: International Trade Law And The Insulation Of Domestic Greenhouse Gas Trading Schemes From Foreign Emissions Credit Markets, Elias Leake Quinn

University of Colorado Law Review

This Comment examines the influence of international trade agreements on the implementation of a hypothetical, domestically- scaled cap-and-trade scheme to facilitate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the United States. Several areas of intersection are examined, including the contemplation of the credits as commodities for trade and the construction of measures designed to offset any competitive disadvantage such a system might put on domestic companies. The Comment concludes that a domestically-scaled cap-and-trade scheme, while an important step in mitigating global climate change, is vulnerable to challenges under existing international trade agreements. Such challenges, if successful, may in turn drive the convergence …

Replacing Slingshots With Swords: Implications Of The Antigua-Gambling 22.6 Panel Report For Developing Countries And The World Trading System, Georgia Hamann

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In December 2007, the WTO awarded Antigua the right to suspend TRIPS obligations at a value of $21 million. This decision represents the WTO's continuing evolution into a body capable of addressing the concerns of developed countries while balancing the legitimate interests of developed nations. For the second time, the WTO has authorized suspension of intellectual property protection under the TRIPS agreement. Such a remedy, if widely adopted, has the capacity to address concerns surrounding effective retaliation by small economies versus large economies, which traditionally have discouraged developing countries from participating in WTO dispute resolution. Additionally, the remedy seems likely …

A Theory Of Wto Adjudication: From Empirical Analysis To Biased Rule Development, Juscelino F. Colares

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The positive theory of litigation predicts that, under certain conditions, plaintiffs and defendants achieve an unremarkable and roughly equivalent share of litigation success. This Article, grounded in an empirical analysis of WTO adjudication from 1995 through 2007, reveals a high disparity between Complainant and Respondent success rates: Complainants win roughly ninety percent of the disputes. This disparity transcends Case Type, Party Identity, Income Level, and other litigant-specific characteristics. After analyzing and discarding standard empirical and theoretical alternative explanations for the systematic disparity in success rates, this study demonstrates, through an examination of patterns in WTO adjudicators' notorious decisions, that biased …

"Shelter Chic": Can The U.S. Government Make It Work?, Kristina R. Montanaro

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Note discusses government donations of seized counterfeit goods to charitable institutions and the implications of these practices. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contributions to the Red Cross for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort serve as a backdrop for important concepts. In making these contributions, the CBP relied on its emergency authority and a presidential proclamation to avoid basic statutory requirements that it (a) obtain consent from the right holders and (b) de-trademark counterfeit goods prior to donation. While the donations inarguably benefitted countless disaster victims and freed up valuable CBP warehouse space, they may have had a detrimental …

Taking Chances: The United States' Policy On Internet Gambling And Its International Implications, Yevgeniya Roysen

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Fragmentation Of The Global Market: The Case Of Digital Versatile Discs (Dvds), Rostam J. Neuwirth

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Financial Crisis Containment, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims.

First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it targets the immediate term. It involves claims of emergency, rule-breaking, time inconsistency and moral hazard. In contrast, regulation, prevention and resolution seek to establish sound incentives for the long term. Second, containment decisions deviate from non-crisis norms in predictable ways, and are consistent across diverse countries and crises. Containment invariably entails three kinds of choices: choices …

Shadow Unilateralism: Enforcing International Trade Law At The Wto, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

This short essay briefly traces the evolution of trade law enforcement from the the GATT to the WTO regime. The WTO's Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) is widely viewed as a major innovation from the GATT regime in that it subordinates unilateral enforcement of trade law to a rule-based system of multilateral enforcement. I recognize the successes of the WTO regime but the institution effective permits (if not encourages) the unilateral enforcement of trade law outside of the DSU framework Specifically, I examine how the DSU system only provides a prospective remedy - that is, the DSU permits retaliation only for …

Terroir Vs. Trademarks: The Debate Over Geographical Indications And Expansions To The Trips Agreement, Emily C. Creditt

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The ever expanding global marketplace and increasing sophistication of consumers has led to a heightened desire for high-quality wines, spirits and food products that derive their unique characteristics from the geographical region from which they originate. The particular geographic identity of a product, known as a "geographical indication" can increase the marketability and value of any number of consumer goods, from wines and spirits to rice and cheese. The desire to protect geographical indications from misappropriation and abuse eventually led to the adoption of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects for Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) during the establishment of the …

Nafta Chapter 11 As Supraconstitution, Stepan Wood, Stephen Clarkson

All Faculty Publications

More and more legal scholars are turning to constitutional law to make sense of the growth of transnational and international legal orders. They often employ constitutional terminology loosely, in a bewildering variety of ways, with little effort to clarify their analytical frameworks or acknowledge the normative presuppositions embedded in their analysis. The potential of constitutional analysis as an instrument of critique of transnational legal orders is frequently lost in methodological confusion and normative controversy. An effort at clarification is necessary. We propose a functional approach to supraconstitutional analysis that applies across issue areas, accommodates variation in kinds and degrees of …

International Financial Centers And The World Economy, James R. Hines Jr.

Other Publications

International financial centers (IFCs) are countries and territories with low tax rates and other features that make them attractive investment locations. These properties of IFCs occasionally raise concerns that they may erode tax collections, divert economic activity, and otherwise burden nearby high-tax countries. A large body of economic research over the last 15 years considers these issues, with findings that point sharply in the opposite direction: the evidence strongly suggests that the policies of IFCs contribute to investment, employment, and the efficient functioning of markets and government policies in other countries.

IFCs contribute to economic activity by improving the potential …

The Global Intellectual Property Order And Its Undetermined Future, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

As an introduction to the inaugural issue of the new WIPO Journal, this essay highlights some of the key recent developments in the intellectual property field. The essay begins by discussing the increasingly complex, and at times incoherent, international legal order governing the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights. It shows how much the system has been transformed since the launch of the Paris and Berne Conventions in the 1880s.

The essay then examines the increasingly polarized debate on intellectual property law and policy. Although the debate’s growing divisiveness is understandable, given the rapid expansion of intellectual property rights …

Building Intellectual Property Coalitions For Development, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

The adoption of the WIPO Development Agenda in October 2007 has provided less developed countries with a rare and unprecedented opportunity to reshape the international intellectual property system in a way that would better advance their interests. However, if these countries are to succeed, they need to take advantage of the current momentum, coordinate better with other countries and nongovernmental organizations, and more actively share with others their experience, knowledge, and best practices.

Commissioned by the EDGE (Emerging Dynamic Global Economies) Network of the University of Ottawa, this paper begins by explaining how building intellectual property coalitions for development (IPC4D) …

From Here To Beijing: Public/Private Overlaps In Trade And Their Effects On U.S. Law, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

Recent news involving contaminated pet food and unsafe toys imported from China makes us question the legal frameworks that facilitated such incidences and stirs anti-globalization sentiment. While consumers wonder about the role of their governments in this context and look for judicial remedies, deeper questions arise regarding the international forces lying beneath the surface of the legal remedial work of our domestic courts. This paper explores the international trade paradigm in place that facilitates the inner workings of private investors and has trickling effects on domestic law. Furthermore, it will show that the trade regime is transnational in nature, consisting …

A Tale Of Two Development Agendas, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In October 2004, Argentina and Brazil introduced a proposal to establish the WIPO Development Agenda. Although scholars have focused primarily on this agenda, as well as the WTO Doha Development Agenda, development agendas have also been established at other international fora, such as those governing public health, human rights, biological diversity, food and agriculture, and information and communications. Interestingly, these development agendas bear strong resemblances to another set of development agendas less developed countries advanced in the 1960s and 1970s. Bringing together these two sets of development agendas, this article examines whether the present agenda can avoid the path of …

Domestic Effects Of The Foreign Activities Of U.S. Multinationals, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

Do firms investing abroad simultaneously reduce their domestic activity? This paper analyzes the relationship between the domestic and foreign operations of US manufacturing firms between 1982 and 2004 by instrumenting for changes in foreign operations with GDP growth rates of the foreign countries in which they invest. Estimates produced using this instrument indicate that 10 percent greater foreign investment is associated with 2.6 percent greater domestic investment, and 10 percent greater foreign employee compensation is associated with 3.7 percent greater domestic employee compensation. These results do not support the popular notion that expansions abroad reduce a firm’s domestic activity, instead …