International Trade Law Commons^™

Trips' Rebound: An Historical Analysis Of How The Trips Agreement Can Ricochet Back Against The United States, Donald P. Harris

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Recently, scholars and commentators around the world have reexamined the role intellectual property rights (IPRs) play in hindering or helping developing countries. These scholars have questioned the doctrine the IPRs help developing countries by promoting economic development, increasing foreign direct investment, stimulating domestic innovation, and improving access to new technologies, and have concluded that imposing "Western-styled" intellectual property regimes (e.g., the U.S. patent regime) on developing countries harms those countries. In particular, such regimes fail to bring any of the purported benefits, while they impose many costs, including preventing people from obtaining life-saving drugs. This Article argues that it is …

Wto And Gmos: Analyzing The European Community's Recent Regulations Covering The Labeling Of Genetically Modified Organisms, Brian Schwartz

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note explores the compatibility of the EC's GMO regulations within the framework of the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures ("SPS Agreement"), the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade ("TBT Agreement"), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 ("GATT 1994" or "GAT"), all integral parts of the WTO Agreement. Part II presents arguments for or against the use of GM-products. Part III explores the concept of ecolabeling by analyzing the general goals of such programs, including the economic theory behind green consumerism and the characteristics necessary for effective schemes. Part IV describes the core …

The Global Challenge To Legal Education: Training Lawyers For A New Paradigm Of Economic, Political And Legal-Cultural Expectations In The 21st Century, Winston P. Nagan, Frsa, Danie Visser

ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law

Enormous developments are taking place in the global economy. Initia- tives are being taken from the top down, and quite literally, from the bottom up.

China's Wto Accession: Economic, Legal, And Political Implications, 27 B.C. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 319 (2004), Karen H. Cross

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the unparalleled economic, legal, and political change that has confronted China during WTO accession. The Article focuses on the relationship between China's unique WTO accession process and China's reform over the past two decades. The author suggests that WTO accession has acted as a lever for economic and legal reform by locking in reform and making it irrevocable. The Article begins with a historical background of China's long road to accession and the way that this process worked to further the previously instated economic reform program. Next, the Article analyzes the manner in which WTO accession has …

Development: Domestic Constraints And External Opportunities From Glabalization, T. N. Srinivasan

Michigan Journal of International Law

In what follows, this Article first discusses the process of development in Section II. Section III is devoted to the external aspects of development, namely international trade, finance, and intergovernmental organizations. Section IV is concerned with the domestic dimensions and legal reform, drawing on the debate on legal reforms in India. The author offers a few concluding remarks in Section V.

Mediating Interactions In An Expanding International Intellectual Property Regime, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

The last few years have been a particularly heady period for governments, private parties, and NGOs seeking to develop new rules to regulate intellectual property ("IP") protection standards. During that time, a slew of lawmaking initiatives, studies, and reports have been launched in a strikingly large number of international venues. Work on intellectual property rights is now underway in intergovernmental organizations such as the World Trade Organization ("WTO"), World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO"), and Food and Agriculture Organization ("FAO"); in negotiating fora such as the Convention on Biological Diversity ("CBD") and its Conference of the Parties and the Commission on …

Separations, Blow-Outs, And Fallout: A Treadise On The Regulatory Aftermath Of The Ford-Firestone Tire Recall, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1073 (2004), Kevin M. Mcdonald

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dynamics Of International Trade Finance Regulation: The Arrangement On Officially Supported Export Credits, Janet K. Levit

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Vultures Or Vanguards: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring Conference On Sovereign Debt Restructuring: The View From The Legal Academy, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile

Faculty Scholarship

The market for sovereign debt differs from the market for corporate debt in several important ways including the risk of opportunistic default by sovereign debtors, the importance of political pressures, and the presence of international development organizations. Moreover, countries are subject to neither liquidation nor standardized processes of debt reorganization. Instead, negotiations between a sovereign debtor and its creditors lead to a voluntary restructuring of the sovereign's debt. One of the greatest difficulties in restructuring claims against sovereign debtors is balancing the interests of the majority of the creditors with those of minority creditors. Holdout creditors serve as a check …

The Varied Policies Of International Juridical Bodies- Reflections On Theory And Practice, John H. Jackson

Michigan Journal of International Law

It can be seen that "fragmentation" can have several dimensions, and that the difference between juridical approaches as well as legislative approaches to treaty or other norm stating documents can result not only from different institutional settings, but also from different policy goals assumed for differing dispute settlement systems.

Reply To Joshua Meltzer, Joost Pauwelyn

Michigan Journal of International Law

A reply to Joshua Meltzer's comment on the author's paper Bridging Fragmentation and Unity: International Law as a Universe of Inter-Connected Islands

Development, Globalization, And Law, Robert L. Kuttner

Michigan Journal of International Law

Is global commerce under essentially laissez-faire rules optimal for economic development? In this era of liberated and deregulated markets, and after the final collapse of communism, a great many commentators would consider that a self-evident question. Of course free global commerce is good for economic development, because we know that the freest possible markets produce the most efficient use of resources and the highest available rates of economic growth. And growth benefits development. How could it be otherwise? And what is the role of law in facilitating commerce and in contouring a particular regime of domestic and transnational commerce and …

Investment Protection In Bilateral And Free Trade Agreements: Implications For The Granting Of Compulsory Licenses, Carlos M. Correa

Michigan Journal of International Law

Can the exercise of any of the key provisions in investment agreements lead to rights and practices that deviate from the terms of the TRIPS Agreement? This issue is specifically explored in relation to compulsory licenses, one of the "safeguards" contemplated in the TRIPS Agreement that developing countries have actively tried to preserve in order to mitigate the powers conferred to patent owners. Despite this attention and interest, no single compulsory license has been granted in a developing country after the adoption of the TRIPS Agreement. This article explores the extent to which investment protection may add another barrier for …

Methods Of Power For Development: Weapons Of The Weak, Weapons Of The Strong, John Braithwaite

Michigan Journal of International Law

Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite conducted a study during the 1990s on global business regulation, interviewing more than five hundred key players in approximately twenty globalizing business regulatory regimes. Results from that study are used in this paper to inform the identification of seven elements of American power in global governance. The paper then poses the question whether those elements can be acquired by developing countries.

Financing For Development, The Monterrey Consensus: Achievements And Prospects, Abdel Hamid Bouab

Michigan Journal of International Law

The International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002, marked the beginning of a new international approach to dealing with issues of development finance. It resulted from a unique process that broke new ground in bringing together all relevant stakeholders in a manner that was unprecedented in inclusiveness. Under the umbrella of the United Nations, all parties involved in the financing for development process contributed to creating a policy framework, the Monterrey Consensus of the International Conference on Financing for Development, to guide their respective future efforts to deal with issues of financing development at …

The New Codex Alimentarius Commission Standards For Food Created With Modern Biotechnology: Implications For The Ec Gmo Framework's Compliance With The Sps Agreement, Aaron A. Ostrovsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note makes two assertions. First, despite the fact that the Codex guidelines do not specifically invoke the Precautionary Principle in name, it can indeed be read into the guidelines in the amount of deference given to states in how they assess risk. This in turn means that the E.C.'s Deliberate Release Directive should be enjoy a presumption of compliance with both the SPS Agreement and the GATT. The second assertion is that even if the adjudicating body of the WTO finds that the Deliberate Release Directive, in relying on the Precautionary Principle, prescribes a higher level of protection than …

The Importance Of Core Labor Rights In World Development, Jonathan P. Hiatt, Deborah Greenfield

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article discusses the meaning and significance of core labor standards and the importance of linking them to trade agreements. It explains why the "protectionist" label often attributed to such linkage efforts by their detractors is misleading, as the example of China illustrates, repression of labor rights constitutes a form of unfair competition which undermines efforts to create a more just and stable world economy.

Un Enfoque Comparativo Sobre La Formacion De Los Contratos Electronicos, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

Understanding the basic principles governing the formation of contracts is of paramount importance when it comes to figuring out the most appropriate to enter into a new contract or to assess the legality of a contract existing ones. While the basic rules for the forming of general contracts are applicable to most type of contracts, regardless of how they are done, there are some legal rules that apply specify to contracts concluded electronically.

Interpreting The Wto Agreements- A Commentary On Professor Pauwelyn's Approach, Joshua Meltzer

Michigan Journal of International Law

In his paper, Professor Pauwelyn argues that pursuant to Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (Vienna Convention), the Appellate Body should consider other rules of international law in the interpretation of the WTO Agreements, when that law reflects the "common intentions" of the parties to the WTO. He argues that this does not mean that "all the parties to the WTO treaty must have formally and explicitly agreed, one after the other, to the new non-WTO rule; nor even that this rule must be otherwise legally bind all WTO members; but rather, that this new …

Treaty Governance, Intellectual Property And Biodiversity, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

When resources become valuable, various social and institutional pressures come to bear to enclose them in a property rights regime. Given the substantial progress of biotechnology and the life sciences, genetic resources found in biological diversity are experiencing such pressures. The question of how much commodification or commercialization of genetic resources is appropriate is of global concern; it affects the distribution of wealth in and among societies and countries. This article explores the emerging treaty law on intellectual property and biodiversity. It inquires What is biodiversity? and Why is biodiversity preservation important? It then focuses on the United Nations Framework …

Test Of Multilateralism In International Trade: U.S. Steel Safeguards, Y.S. Lee

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The highly publicized safeguard measures applied by the United States to an array of steel products in 2002 became one of the biggest and most controversial trade disputes in recent history. Virtually all major trading nations in the world, including the European Community, Japan , China , Brazil , Korea , New Zealand , Switzerland and Norway , were the direct parties to this dispute with the United States . The contentious legal grounds of the U.S. safeguard measures, as well as the lack of adequate consultations between the United States and its trading counterparts, have brought the international community …

United States' Trade Policy And The Exportation Of United States' Culture, Beverly I. Moran

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The United States trade deficit grows larger each year.' What the trade deficit means and what is to be done in response to its growth shifts with administrations and over time. Nevertheless, since World War II, the United States' general position on international trade has been unbridled support for free access to free markets.

Now, the world economy is changing and our economy is responding. When the international trade regime we work under began cross border trade meant steel and oil and cotton. Now, our Gross Domestic Product and employment comes from services as much as anything else. Just as …

Injury Investigations In "Material Retardation" Antidumping Cases, Prakash Narayanan

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Despite the criticisms of economists to antidumping measures, they continue to be the most often used trade remedy measure. A new trend that may be observed is the use of the "material retardation" standard of injury to demonstrate injury to domestic industry that is one of the requirements for imposing antidumping duty. It is essential to be wary of this trend as unlike the other two types of injury, the WTO lacks specific guidelines for the use of this standard. The general rules in the Antidumping Agreement are unsuitable for the situations where the material retardation standard is relevant, and …

The 2004 International Law Review Symposium On The Free Trade Area Of The Americas: Implications Of A Hemispheric Marketplace, Thomas M. Haney

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Process And Substance In Wto Reform, James T. Gathii

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Insulating Domestic Policy Through International Legal Minimalism: A Re-Characterization Of The Foreign Affairs Trade Doctrine, James T. Gathii

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Should The World Trade Organization Incorporate Labor And Environmental Standards, Chantal Thomas

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enhancing The Legitimacy Of The World Trade Organization, Andrea Greisberger

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has faced harsh criticism from developing nations in recent years. Many developing nations feel that the promises they received when they joined the WTO have not been fulfilled. These nations feel that wealthy, industrialized nations like the United States and the members of the European Union are the only ones that have benefited from the organization. Moreover, they feel that these developed nations have benefited at their expense through the WTO's dispute settlement process. Many improvements to the WTO have been proposed. However, the one that seems the most able to help developing nations, the …

The Development Of The World Trade Organization And The International Criminal Court, Sydney M. Cone Iii

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Caspian Dispute: Is A Doctrinal Analysis Too Late Or Can We Turn Back The Hands Of Time, Houman Afshar

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.