International Trade Law Commons^™

The Role Of The Registry And Legal Division Of The African Court Of Human And People's Rights In Dispute Settlement, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Morris K. Odeh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This Essay explores whether the African Court of Human and People's Rights’ (African Court) Registry and Legal Division have a similar expansive role in the dispute settlement mechanism as the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Secretariat. The African Court is the African Union's regional body for enforcing human rights. This Essay contributes to the scholarship on African international courts by testing the central arguments in Pauwelyn and Pelc's “Who Guards the ‘Guardians of the System’? The Role of the Secretariat in WTO Dispute Settlement” through a comparative analysis of the role of the Secretariat within the African Court. Despite the growing …

Maritime Transportation: Let's Slow Down A Bit, Maxime Sèbe, Pierre Scemama, Anne Choquet, Jean-Luc Jung, Aldo Chircop, Phénia Marras-Aït Razouk, Sylvain Michel, Valérie Stiger-Pouvreau, Laura Recuero-Virto

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Maritime transportation is a major contributor to the world economy, but has significant social and environmental impacts. Each impact calls for different technical or operational solutions. Amongst these solutions, we found that speed reduction measures appear to mitigate several issues: (1) collision with wildlife; (2) collision with non-living objects; (3) underwater noise; (4) invasive species; and (5) gas emission. We do not pretend that speed reduction is the best solution for each individual issue mentioned in this paper, but we argue that it could be a key solution to significantly reduce these threats all together. Further interdisciplinary research is required …

Gender And Intersectionality In Business And Human Rights Scholarship, Melisa N. Handl, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, we explore what intersectionality, as an analytic tool, can contribute to business and human rights (BHR) scholarship. To date, few BHR scholars have explicitly engaged in intersectional analysis. While gender analysis of BHR issues remains crucial to expose inequality in business activity, we argue that engagement with intersectionality can enrich and support this and other BHR scholarship. Intersectional approaches allow us to move beyond single-axis analysis, contest simplistic representations about gender issues and expose the complexity of human relations. It draws our attention to structures that sustain disadvantage such as racism, colonialism, social and economic marginalization and …

Invisible Workers, Desiree Leclercq

Scholarly Works

In the parable, The Emperor Has No Clothes, an emperor walks naked through a public procession, assured by his own pride and vain advisors that he was wearing a magnificent robe visible only to the smart and worthy. Like the emperor, governments imagine that they have cloaked international economic law in a new “worker-centered” trade policy. This essay explains how their efforts have merely exposed the deficits in international economic law. They have failed to account for asymmetries between capital and labor and hierarchies between sectors of workers. They also exclude the voices of the world's most vulnerable workers—particularly those …

Introduction To The Symposium On Gregory Shaffer, "Governing The Interface Of U.S.-China Trade Relations", Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

What happens to international institutions when expectations about their function and purpose shift? Must such institutions give way as states reconsider the settlements on which those institutions are based, or can they adapt (or be adapted) to new geopolitical realities? Or to put it most bluntly, as the geopolitical balance of power shifts, must law give way to power? At a very deep level, these are the questions animating Gregory Shaffer's "Governing the Interface of U.S.-China Trade Relations," published in the American Journal ofInternationalfaw. 1 As the ballooning rivalry between the United States and China stretches and strains institutions like …

Voices From Below—Africa’S Contribution To The Development Of The Norm Of Corporate Responsibility To Respect Human Rights, Akinwumi Olawuyi Ogunranti

PhD Dissertations

The long conversations about corporate responsibility predominantly take place in forums and conferences in the Global North. Yet, the majority of the human rights abuses and their impacts are felt by peasants, farmers, children, and women in local communities in the Global South who do not have a voice in the institutionalized governance systems that animate global affairs. This thesis answers the question of how norms and human rights institutions in Africa can influence the corporate responsibility to respect (CR2R) norm as embedded in pillar II of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Through the theory …

Changemakers: The Line Between Talent And Desire, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Designing An Equitable Border Carbon Adjustment Mechanism, Ivan Ozai

Articles & Book Chapters

Policy makers worldwide have increasingly considered the adoption of a carbon adjustment at the border to equalize carbon pricing on foreign goods with carbon policies imposed on domestic production. The implementation of a border carbon adjustment (BCA) in the European Union has been recently proposed by the European Commission, followed by similar plans in the United States and Canada, as an instrument designed to address concerns about competitiveness and emissions leakage resulting from the absence of a global price on carbon or an internationally coordinated carbon-pricing system. Despite its potential to address these issues, the implementation of a BCA raises …

Intellectual Property Rights As A Barrier For Developing Countries To Access A Covid-19 Vaccine, Kristina Frkovic

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

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Tax Harmony: The Promise And Pitfalls Of The Global Minimum Tax, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Young Ran (Christine) Kim

Articles

The rise of globalization has become a double-edged sword for countries seeking to implement a beneficial tax policy. On one hand, there are increased opportunities for attracting foreign capital and the benefits that increased jobs and tax revenue brings to a society. However, there is also much more tax competition among countries to attract foreign capital and investment. As tax competition has grown, effective corporate tax rates have continued to be cut, creating a “race-to-the-bottom” issue.

In 2021, 137 countries forming the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS passed a major milestone in reforming international tax by successfully introducing the framework …

Responding To Mass, Computer-Generated, And Malattributed Comments, Steven J. Balla, Reeve Bull, Bridget C.E. Dooling, Emily Hammond, Michael A. Livermore, Michael Herz, Beth Simone Noveck

Articles

A number of technological and political forces have transformed the once staid and insider dominated notice-and-comment process into a forum for large scale, sometimes messy, participation in regulatory decisionmaking. It is not unheard of for agencies to receive millions of comments on rulemakings; often these comments are received as part of organized mass comment campaigns. In some rulemakings, questions have been raised about whether public comments were submitted under false names, or were automatically generated by computer “bot” programs. In this Article, we examine whether and to what extent such submissions are problematic and make recommendations for how rulemaking agencies …

A Bull In A China Shop: How Cfius Made Tiktok A National Security Problem, Adina Feder

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note critiques the expansion of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States' (CFIUS) mandate under the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (FIRRMA), particularly its inclusion of "sensitive personal data" as a factor in national security reviews. This expansion has led to overly broad and vague definitions, resulting in unnecessary restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) without adequately addressing legitimate national security concerns. The note argues that data privacy issues should be addressed through separate federal privacy legislation rather than CFIUS, which is ill-suited to handle such matters. It calls for clearer definitions and a …

Consensus Decision-Making And Legislative Inertia At The Wto: Can International Law Help?, Americo B. Zampetti, Patrick Low, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

The recent emergence of Joint Statement Initiatives (JSIs) – that is, negotiating initiatives among a subset of the World Trade Organization (WTO) membership – has reignited the debate over law-making in the WTO. As things stand, the WTO operates on the basis of a widespread expectation that consensus needs to be achieved for any decision to be taken. Agreements that produce rights and obligations only among a subset of the membership (‘plurilaterals’, or Annex 4 agreements) are also subject to the consensus rule and thus remain exceptional. Are JSIs the first move towards redressing the current equilibrium in favour of …

South Africa’S Reformed Investment Regime As A Model For Developing Countries, John Mayer

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Beginning in 2012, South Africa decided to unilaterally terminate many Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) with European countries—this represented a departure from the 1990s, where South Africa, like many other developing countries, entered into BITs with wealthy, capital-exporting states in the hopes of attracting foreign direct investment. In 2015, South Africa enacted, in place of the BITs, the Protection of Investment Act, designed to protect foreign investors while also providing the state more freedom to regulate in the public interest. This Comment analyzes the history of South Africa’s BIT policy, and argues that South Africa has suffered minimally, if at all, …

The African Continental Free Trade Area: Local Content Requirements As A Means To Addressing Africa's Productive Capacity Constraints, Nchimunya D. Ndulo

Michigan Journal of International Law

The Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) presents an unprecedented opportunity for African integration and is projected to spur unprecedented levels of job growth and productivity, and to drive sustainable economic development. However, as the implementation of the AfCFTA unfolds, it is apparent that certain bottlenecks stand in the way of the AfCFTA achieving its full potential. The bottleneck at the core of the AfCFTA’s effective implementation is the limited availability of tradable goods due to the limited productive capacity of many State Parties. This article argues that the implementation of local content requirements by State Parties, …

Unraveling The Longstanding Riddle About The Doctrine Of Legitimate Expectation Under International Investment Law: Ascertaining Legal Tests For The Customary International Law’S Minimum Standard Of Treatment, Haneul Jung, Nu Ri Jung

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In 2018, the ICJ rendered a judgment in Bolivia v. Chile that effectively denied the status of the doctrine of legitimate expectation as a customary international law. The ICJ’s judgment came as a surprise to many in the international arbitration community because a whole host of international tribunals established under various investment treaties have found that this doctrine, as well as the broader principle of “fair and equitable treatment,” has effectively attained the status as the “minimum standard of treatment” under customary international law. Given the lack of elaborated reasoning, however, the ICJ’s ruling fails to resolve the recurring debate …

The Disaster Chain: Counter-Mapping Global Value Chains, Peer Zumbansen

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Abstract: Prevailing accounts by consultancies and logistics scholars present global value chains [GVCs] as an expression of contemporary international economic integration and connectivity. As such, they are considered crucial to the pursuit of economic growth and prosperity. At the same time, GVCs are deemed susceptible to “disruptions” through natural catastrophes, restrictive trade policies or pandemics. Left out of the standard narratives, even in light of the experience of the global Coronavirus pandemic, is the actual, as such disruptive impact of global value chain capitalism on human and natural lives. Dominant depictions of global value chain governance treat labor, environment and …

Protection Of Test Data Under Article 39.3 Of The Trips Agreement: Advancements And Challenges After 25+ Years Of Interpretation And Application, Eric M. Solovy

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Among the types of intellectual property rights covered by the TRIPS Agreement, WTO Members must, pursuant to Article 39.3, protect certain test and other data submitted “as a condition of approving the marketing of pharmaceutical or of agricultural chemical products.” Such protection provides the incentives necessary for the biopharmaceutical industry to conduct the lengthy, expensive multi-phased clinical testing that is required to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of a new drug or vaccine.

Test data protection has become increasingly more important to the development of new medicines in the past several years. That is in significant part because biologics (i.e., …

Unjustly Vilified Trips-Plus:? Intellectual Property Law In Free Trade Agreements, Marketa Trimble

American University Law Review

Intellectual property (IP) law provisions of free trade agreements (FTAs) have attracted much criticism. Critics have argued that FTA negotiators, succumbing to the lobbying of various stakeholders, have eliminated or significantly limited many of the flexibilities that multilateral treaties had created, forced stronger IP protection onto developing countries, and fragmented international IP law. While agreeing with a great deal of the criticism expressed by others, this Article departs from the typical vilification of FTAs by identifying and analyzing the positive features of FTA IP provisions that are worth replicating and expanding in future FTAs. These positive features include provisions concerning …

The Negotiable Transport Document, Benjamin Geva

All Papers

With the emergence of a long-distance land-based trade, along with the expansion of a non-sea based multimodal trade, a demand arose for a negotiable transport document which is not limited to marine transport. A series of international conventions responded to such demand by providing for new types of negotiable transport documents. However, these conventions failed to accord to such documents the features of a document of title and to clarify their negotiable character. The task of overcoming this obstacle is hindered by the fragmentary nature of the law governing the marine bill of lading, which is the classic transport document …