Simon Lester

Over at EJIL: Talk!, David Caron and Esme Shirlow comment on the backlash against investment arbitration and international economic law more generally, and say this: For many, the assumption is that investment disputes, absent an arbitration mechanism, will go to the national courts of host States. This has been proposed

This is from Senator Mitch McConnell, as quoted in Inside US Trade: “So TPA -- Trade Promotion Authority -- is in place for the next president whoever that may be and the current agreement, the Trans-Pacific agreement, which has some serious flaws, will not be acted upon this year,” McConnell

Over in Europe, there is a great deal of controversy over bans on the use of Burqini swimwear: A village in Corsica became the third place in France to ban the Burqini from its beaches Monday after a fight broke out over the weekend over the swimsuit favored by some

Call for Papers: Cognitive Sociology, Culture, and International Law iCourts, Centre of Excellence for International Courts, University of Copenhagen 28-29 April 2017 Workshop Theme The past few decades have seen growth in behavioural approaches in the social sciences. In this new behavioural revolution, cognitive psychology, behavioural economics, and sociologists of

This is from today's Russia - Pigs WTO panel report: 6.2. In light of the parties' comments to the Interim Report, on 4 March 2016 the Panel informed the parties that it had decided to have an interim review meeting, which took place on 10 March

This is a guest post by Matthew Kennedy, a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing.  He was formerly a senior lawyer in the WTO Secretariat and Secretary of the WTO Council for TRIPS.  Intellectual Property Cases in a Trade Law Tribunal:

Via Inside US Trade, this is from the draft Statement of Administrative Action for the TPP: 1. Implementing Bill ... g. Dispute Settlement Section 105(a) of the bill authorizes the President to establish within the Department of Commerce an office responsible for providing administrative assistance to dispute settlement panels established

Global Arbitration Review published a summary of an interview with Gary Born about international arbitration. Here's an excerpt, focusing on the investment arbitration part: Interviewed as part of a New York International Arbitration Centre event in memory of its late founding chair, Judith Kaye, Born addressed a range

From a press conference today: Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  You're here today touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but Hillary Clinton is against it.  Her vice presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, has now reversed himself and is now against it.  Donald Trump is, too, meaning that the next President is

Political scientists Todd Allee and Andrew Lugg have a new article showing that the TPP is textually more like U.S. FTAs than it is like the FTAs of other TPP parties: We evaluate the TPP in a new way by systematically comparing the recently-released text of the TPP to