SEC. 791. CIVIL ACTION.
`(a) Injury Determination- Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, in an antidumping or countervailing duty investigation initiated under section 702 or 732, a petitioning party, may, not later than 30 days after the date an investigation is initiated under such sections, elect to bring a civil action in a United States district court, for a determination that--
...
`(1) an industry in the United States--
`(A) is materially injured, or
`(B) is threatened with material injury, or
`(2) the establishment of an industry in the United States is materially retarded,
by reason of imports, or sales (or the likelihood of sales) for importation, of the merchandise subject to the investigation, and that imports of the subject merchandise are not negligible.
(c) Effect of Election; Relief-
...
(3) SPECIAL RULES- The following rules shall apply to actions initiated under subsection (a) or (b):
...
(C) PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT OF DECISIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION-
The decisions of the Commission in other investigations initiated under this title shall not be binding on the court.
If I'm reading this all correctly, the proposed legislation would allow petitioners to have the injury determination made either by the ITC or a federal district court. Presumably, some petitioners would go to the ITC and some to the courts, depending on various circumstances. In this regard, the legislation specifies that ITC decisions (in cases not going to the courts) "shall not be binding" on the courts.
I'm wondering whether this part about the absence of precedential effect could lead to divergent interpretations of the law, and thus violate the GATT Article X:3(a) requirement that "laws, regulations, judicial decisions and administrative rulings of general application" be administered "in a uniform, impartial and reasonable manner." I suppose uniformity is the main issue here. If you have two separate judicial/quasi-judicial systems hearing the same kind of cases, and one is told it is not bound by the other, aren't the two likely to follow different interpretive paths? Perhaps an "as such" claim would not work here, but if there was actual divergence, an "as applied" claim might succeed.
Scott Lincicome has additional thoughts on the legislation here.
