Rob Howse

True, by billing Roberto Azevedo's speech today as a "vision speech," high expectations were set.  Yet even against modest expectations, the result was dismal.  I like Azevedo and I admire his statements about transparency and inclusiveness.  I feel the sincerity of his commitment.  But he has

I'll be blogging more in the coming days about the exciting possibilities opened up by Roberto Azevedo's ascent to the leadership of the WTO.  This doesn't mean that I have forgotten the procedural corruption that led to the elimination of the African candidates in

A few further observations. Some of the panelists had difficulty understanding how permitting for-profit or fully commercial sealing under the indigenous or marine management exceptions would undermine the public morals or animal welfare objectives of the EU.  I find this baffling:  it is very easy to see why people would

Returning to New York City, some of the darkness lifts.  Good to read that Delaware's senate, following New York's the week before the Seals hearings, has passed a shark's fin ban.  This evening, at NYU law, we host John Ruggie, speaking about his new

It is easy to be depressed and disgruntled after this hearing.  A panel Chair who is ignorant even of the most basic case law fundamental to the panel's own duties and jurisdiction, a Chair who manages to make a sexual and racial caricature in one breath, then a

As I tweeted earlier, a dramatic moment occured in the Seal Products hearing this morning, when the chair of the panel took the view that once a panel  has been approved by the DSB whether the original request is defective is merely a matter of academic interest and of no

Toward the end of the afternoon, the focus became the comparison of the non-indigenous non-marine management seal hunt in Canada with the indigenous seal hunt in Greenland.  Norway insisted that both hunts are really "commercial" since they are both on a significant scale, both involve the provision of

If paranoid people can have enemies, then a cliche can be true.  So, today, a picture is worth a thousand words.  The hearing quickly broke out of the anachronistic ritual of exchanges of written texts read word for word as the EU screened graphic videos of seals writhing in agony

My main posts on today's session of the Seals hearing are a few hours away, but there is one particular strategem of Norway that I thought I'd comment on right away—it concerns a question that Ruti Teitel and I have written on recently, the use