International Trade Law Commons^™

The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional 'Safety And Soundness' To Systematic 'Financial Stability' In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Since the global financial dramas of 2008-09, authorities on financial regulation have come increasingly to counsel the inclusion of macroprudential policy instruments in the standard ‘toolkit’ of finance-regulatory measures employed by financial supervisors. The hallmark of this perspective is its focus not simply on the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions, as is characteristic of the traditional ‘microprudential’ perspective, but also on certain structural features of financial systems that can imperil such systems as wholes. Systemic ‘financial stability’ thus comes to supplement, though not to supplant, institutional ‘safety and soundness’ as a regulatory desideratum.

The move from primarily micro- …

Four Challenges For Ttip Regulatory Cooperation, Richard Parker

Faculty Articles and Papers

While public debate over trade policy focuses on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, another mammoth trade agreement is moving forward, more quietly, between two of the three largest economies in the world: The United States (US) and the European Union (EU). The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) aims to create the largest free trade zone in the world, encompassing two huge economies that together comprise nearly half of the world's gross domestic product.

The two sides hope that TTIP will generate more than 200 billion dollars per year in benefits for producers and consumers on both sides of …

Of Trucks, Trains, & Ships: Relative Liability In Multimodal Shipping, Amir H. Khoury

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

Investment Arbitration In East Asia And The Pacific A Statistical Analysis Of Bilateral Investment Treaties, Other International Investment Agreements And Investment Arbitrations In The Region, Sandra Friedrich, Claudia T. Salomon

Articles

Many countries in the East Asian and Pacific (EAP) region have strengthened their networks of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and other international investment agreements (IIAs). This growth in investment protection instruments not only illustrates the region's continued attractiveness to foreign investors, but also reflects a shift of several developing EAP countries from having been predominantly recipients of foreign investment in the past, toward becoming important sources of foreign investment abroad. Reflecting trade and investment patterns, as of December 2014, EAP countries concluded a total of at least 712 BITs and 69 other IlAs. On the heels of this development, the …

Human Rights Provisions In Free Trade Agreements: Do The Ends Justify The Means?, Meredith Kolsky Lewis

Journal Articles

Numerous Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) contain provisions imposing human rights-related obligations, particularly in the case of agreements between the European Union and a developing country (often a former colony). Such obligations often consist of hortatory “best endeavors” language rather than legally binding provisions. Even the small number of provisions that are binding are very rarely enforced. Furthermore, even if an FTA features human rights-related provisions, it may contain other terms that have negative implications for human rights. Thus, including human rights provisions in FTAs will not necessarily result in better human rights outcomes. There are additional reasons to be cautious …

Free Trade Agreements And The Lacey Act: A Carrot And Stick Approach To Prevent And Deter Trade In Iuu Fisheries, Ginna Arevalo

Florida A & M University Law Review

The U.S. is the world’s largest importer of seafood, importing virtually every fish sold in the U.S. market. Trade statistics do not break down the percentage of imported wild harvested fish, but a recent study estimated that twenty to thirty-two percent are caught illegally. Trade in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fisheries undermines efforts to conserve fish stocks, generates global annual losses of up to twenty-three billion dollars, and weakens economic opportunity for U.S. fishermen. Part I of this paper explains the role of different actors in the trade of duty-free IUU fish and how IUU catches may enter the …

The Lisbon Agreement: Why The United States Should Stop Fighting The Geneva Act, Danielle Dudding

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In May 2015, members of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a Diplomatic Conference that resulted in the Geneva Act of the Lisbon Agreement on Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications. The Act modified the Lisbon Agreement (originally created in 1958), extending its previous protection of appellations of origin to geographical indications as well. The United States, which remains a non-party to the Lisbon Agreement, has been adamantly against the expansion of the Agreement to geographical indications. This Note explores the issues surrounding the Geneva Act, the state of the law and international agreements leading up to the Act, …

Coal And Gold, Hard And Cold: Using Trade Agreements To Resolve Human Rights Violations In The Caribbean Colombia Mineral Extraction Industry, Stephen Joseph Powell

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

The obvious recipients of the bounty made possible by modem regional trade agreements (RTAs) are the transnational corporations (TNCs) whose markets these agreements expand and whose investments they protect. It is equally clear, however, that TNCs have escaped direct responsibility for compliance with the obligations undertaken in these agreements, leaving the actionforcing commitments to the signatory governments. Such an escape from quasi-signatory status is inconsistent with emerging international law. In the fields of international criminal and human rights law, it "has long been recognized.., that international law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as well as States. Moreover, in most …

Competition Policy And Free Trade: Antitrust Provisions In Ptas, Anu Bradford, Tim Büthe

Faculty Scholarship

Trade agreements increasingly contain provisions concerning ‘behind-the-border’ barriers to trade, often beyond current World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments (Dur, Baccini and Elsig 2014). Today’s preferential trade agreements (PTAs) may include, for instance, rules regarding ‘technical’ barriers to trade that go beyond the WTO’s Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement), accelerating the replacement of differing national product safety standards with common international standards and thus reducing the trade-inhibiting effect of regulatory measures (Buthe and Mattli 2011; World Trade Organization 2012). Today’s PTAs may also go beyond WTO rules in prohibiting preferences for domestic producers in government procurement (Arrowsmith and …

Standing For Human Rights Abroad, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

When may states impose coercive measures such as asset freezes, trade embargos, and investment restrictions to protect the human rights of foreign nationals abroad? Drawing inspiration from Hugo Grotius’s guardianship account of humanitarian intervention, this Article offers a new theory of states’ standing to enforce human rights abroad: under some circumstances, international law authorizes states to impose countermeasures as fiduciary representatives, asserting the human rights of oppressed foreign peoples for the benefit of those peoples. The fiduciary theory explains why all states may use countermeasures to vindicate the human rights of foreign nationals abroad despite the fact that they do …

The Risks We Are Willing To Eat: Food Imports And Safety, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Recent efforts to regulate the safety of U.S. food imports have not kept up with the complexity of global trade and the risks that accompany globalization. Congress drafted the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 ("FSMA") in response to heightened food safety risks, surging imports, and an outdated food import safety system. While the FSMA provides the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") additional authority to regulate food facilities, establish standards for safe produce, recall contaminated foods, and oversee imported foods, vulnerabilities still exist.

This article exposes problems with the old system of food import rules and significant challenges facing the …

Ilo Labor Standards And Trade Agreements: A Case For Consistency, Desiree Leclercq, Jordi Agusti-Panareda, Franz Christian Ebert

Scholarly Works

A growing number of trade agreements have taken an important step toward ensuring consistency by referring to - and hence incorporating the legal content of - ILO instruments. On its face, this uniform reference suggests an increasing alignment between the ILO's international labor standards system and the labor provisions included in the various trade agreements. The application of these references in the decentralized trade context needs to be considered carefully, however, as there is a risk of inconsistent practices between agreements.

Black Cat, White Cat: The Identity Of The Wto Judges, Louise Johannesson, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

WTO judges are proposed by the WTO Secretariat and elected to act as ‘judges’ if either approved by the parties to a dispute, or by the WTO Director-General in case no agreement between the parties has been possible. They are typically ‘Geneva crowd’, that is, they are either current or former delegates representing their country before the WTO. This observation holds for both first- as well as second-instance WTO judges (e.g. Panelists and members of the Appellate Body). In that, the WTO evidences an attitude strikingly similar to the GATT. Whereas the legal regime has been heavily ‘legalized’, the people …

2014 International Trade Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, Jennifer S. Huber, Simon G. Courtman

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cool Story: Country Of Origin Labeling And The First Amendment, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Country of origin labeling (COOL) requirements have long been part of government regulation of commerce. While one might ordinarily think of mandatory COOL as part of trade policy--or even as a means of encouraging individual citizens to engage in country-specific buying that would be disallowed as protectionism if carried out by their governments -- the most robust legal challenges to mandatory COOL now come from the First Amendment, not from free trade principles. This reliance on free speech claims offers a stark example of the charismatic force of the First Amendment. Objections having little to do with free speech at …

Steps Towards An Alignment Of Intellectual Property In South-South Exchanges: A Return To Trips, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Some of the most instrumental players in shaping the course of intellectual property policies in the South are the so-called BRIC countries. The acronym BRIC originally encompassed Brazil, Russia, India and China. In 2011, South Africa formally joined the BRIC countries, which are now referred to either by the original acronym or by BRICS. While categorizations like BRICS attract a fair amount of criticism, with questions surrounding the criteria used to aggregate disparate economies, the concept of emerging economies in the South seeking to advance similar development agendas has become accepted currency in multiple fields, from institutional cooperation to financial …

Confused, Frustrated, And Exhausted: Solving The U.S. Digital First Sale Doctrine Problem Through The International Lens, Alandis K. Brassel

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Users worldwide enjoy digital goods such as music and e-books on a daily basis. They have become a major part of people's lives, with uses ranging from lighthearted entertainment to serious educational pursuits. In many cases, convenience and affordability make digital goods more preferable than their analog counterparts. However, users often cannot use digital goods as freely as they would analog goods. Courts, legislation, and businesses prohibit those users, accustomed to reselling unwanted hard-copy books or vinyl records, from reselling digital books and music. This confuses users as to what they can actually do with their digital goods. This Note …

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them: The U.S. Solution To The Issue Of Corporate Inversions, Scott Deangelis

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

There is an old proverb, "If you can't beat them, join them, "that suggests that those who cannot win against some group should stop fighting and instead band together with them. It seems clear that when it comes to corporate inversions, the United States cannot win. Instead, countries overseas have taken advantage of tax break schemes to lure multinational companies away from the United States. This Note suggests that to prevent further foreign inversions, the United States should join these foreign countries in two ways. First, the United States should put its support behind the OECD's plan of a multilateral …

The Diversity Challenge: Exploring The 'Invisible College' Of International Arbitration, Susan Franck

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

As diversity can affect the perceived legitimacy of a state’s dispute resolution system and the quality of judicial decisions, diversity levels in the national bench and bar have been an area of transnational concern. By contrast, little is known about diversity of adjudicators and counsel in international arbitration. With a lack of accurate, complete, and publicly available data about international arbitrators and practitioners, speculation about membership in the “invisible college” of international arbitration abounds. Using data from a survey of attendees at the prestigious and elite biennial Congress of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration permitted one glimpse into the …

Taking Care Of Business: The Legal Affairs Division From The Gatt To The Wto, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

The WTO is usually referred to as a ‘member-driven organisation’. This term aims to capture the idea that it is states and customs territories, the members of the WTO, that have the initiative to decide on the direction of the institution. The WTO Secretariat is more or less what the term denotes: staff hired in order to help the members realise their aspirations. This is as true today as it was yesterday. Actually, over the years the Secretariat has for various reasons accumulated extra responsibilities, always with the tacit acquiescence or explicit acknowledgement of the members. In short, the members …