Rob Howse

In our YJIL article on the Seals dispute "Permitting Pluralism", Jo Langille and I argued that the TBT Agreement is not designed to apply to measures dealing with intrinsic moral principles of right and wrong; many of its provisions seem to address instrumental risk regulation, and the ordinary

Some readers have noticed my tweets during the AB hearing today on Seals.  I wanted to mention that I'll be blogging my blow-by-blow and analysis of the day in a few hours right here-after some needed sleep  The whole afternoon was focused on the issue of whether the

This Monday I will have a free-ranging debate about the Bali result and the future of the WTO with Bernard Hoekman and Petros Mavroidis (David Palmeter will moderate).  The debate will be webcast live 1730-1615 CET (Florence time) from the Global Governance Programme at the European University Institute.  This is

A story from Reuters http://reut.rs/1a0As7m has been circulating in the last hours that the blame for the collapse of the WTO talks is almost entirely India's. The theory is that the "electioneering" of the Indian government has led it to reject the peace

I am inclined to the view that failure at Bali may be just what is needed to get the WTO to make a fresh start, creating an agenda that corresponds to the needs of this century not the last.  At the same time, I've been impressed by the

Among the reaons, and there are many, why India is among the world's great democracies, is the quality and political responsibility of its journalists. An article just published in an Indian newspaper explores brilliantly how the peace clause to which India seems to have acquiesced-but already apparently with

The saga of the G33 food security proposal in the WTO negotiations is a fascinating tale of law and politics. India has been a leader of this proposal, which would be a good start in bringing WTO norms more fully into alignment with the right to food in international law.

It almost goes without saying that it is an egregious violation of the principles of liberal democratic governance that Canada-and the EU, apparently-are keeping the agreed, final text of the CETA a secret.  I can only hope that NGOs somewhere are seeking it through access to information proceedings in both

Having now spoken to several people who have seen the leaked Seals panel report-I still haven't-what appears to be the case is that the panel has upheld the general measure but found some of the exceptions to be violations.  To my mind, this raises a vexing issue concerning

Among the reasons I was positive about the choice of Roberto Azevedo as WTO DG was his extensive experience with the dispute settlement process in the WTO, perhaps its most important and certainly most successful function today.  I was very surprised by a recent report in an Indian newspaper that