Rob Howse

I thought I'd announce that I have a new website, which makes many of my publications available for downloading at one place, including selected forthcoming publications.  From the menu you can find these under various topics, which include "Globalization and Governance" and "International Law."

The failure to agree yesterday at the WTO on the adoption of the Bali Trade Facilitation Agreement is widely being misrepresented in the media as the collapse of Bali and a new or renewed crisis for the WTO system.  True to their venerable habits of ultimatum diplomacy and pushing around

Early next week, plurilateral negotiations on liberalization of trade in green goods will be launched at the WTO.  The negotiations are based on an agreement between a sub-set of WTO Members that was announced at Davos, and represent a new beginning for the treatment of environmental goods and services at

This morning in Florence I presented a very rough version of a paper I'm working on about food security post-Bali.  As followers of this site will recall, thanks to India holding firm, the interim solution on food security contains a peace clause that precludes dispute settlement complaints concerning

ASIL Insights has just posted a preliminary assessment of the AB ruling in Seals co-authored by Jo Langille, Katie Sykes and me.bit.ly/1uiYXcx The exchanges on this blog were very helpful to us in the deliberations that led to our joint piece.  So many thanks to Simon, our

To say the least, there is some puzzlement among WTO lawyers as to exactly why the AB found that the TBT Agreement did not apply to the EU ban on products from commercial seal hunts.   The AB refered to the fact that the EU ban was based on characteristics of

The AB has held, without ambiguity or qualification, that the EU Parliament's seal products ban is justified as "necessary" for the protection of public morals under GATT Article XX (a), because of the contribution of the ban to the reduction in the number of seals killed

Since the AB's  ruling in US-Cloves on TBT 2.1, where it introduced the notion that a measure does not violate National Treatment or MFN if  the detrimental effects on competition are due exclusively to a legitimate regulatory distinction, there has been much discussion on this blog and

This is the first in a series of posts on different specific aspects of the AB ruling in Seal Products.  On the big picture result, Jo Langille, Katie Sykes and I should be commenting in short order in a number of fora. With respect to MFN GATT Article I:1