Simon Lester

Over at EJIL:Talk!, Arman Sarvarian and Fontanelli Filippo respond to the Appellate Body reappointment controversy with some reform suggestions: A Single-Term System? The chair of the DSB noted that further consultations were necessary to exit the deadlock. Recourse to diplomacy reveals the structural limits of the applicable procedural rules;

In the last post, I said I would report the details of the DSB discussion of the Appellate Body reappointment controversy when they are available. Well, Inside US Trade has them here. They probably don't want me reposting the whole article, but here's a snippet: The

Here is what Greg wrote about the Appellate Body reappointment controversy, in the Huffington Post: Following the Berlin Wall’s fall, the United States drove the creation of the World Trade Organization and its tribunal, the Appellate Body. The tribunal rose quickly to prominence for its clarification of WTO rules

The U.S. International Trade Commission issued its report on the TPP last week. This is from the ITC press release: The Commission used a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to determine the impact of TPP relative to a baseline projection that does not include TPP.  The model estimated that

Donald Trump has a sophisticated and nuanced take on the MFN principle as applied in trade negotiations.  Ha ha, just kidding. Here's what he said a couple weeks ago: "I want one-on-one: If somebody treats us well, we make a trade agreement, and I'll have

The American Society of International Law International Economic Interest Group is now accepting papers for its Biennial Conference, which will take place September 30, 2016 - October 1, 2016 at Georgetown University Law Center.  This is from the call for papers: I. Overall Concept and Themes Overall theme: Making International

This is from the Draft Interim Technical Report, Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the USA, prepared by the consultancy Ecorys for the European Commission: 14. Main expected social impacts from TTIP: long-term wages and prices rise, short-term and sectoral

This is a guest from trade lawyer Adarsh Ramanujan Continuing from my earlier post on the recent ECJ judgements relating to the EU Directive on tobacco products, one part of the dispute involved Poland’s challenge that the EU-wide ban on cigarettes with characteristic flavouring, including menthol, was not permissible.

This is a guest from trade lawyer Adarsh Ramanujan Last week, the European Court of Justice, issued its judgment (here, here, and here) has dismissed the action initiated by Poland against the EU’s Directive 2014/40/EU concerning tobacco products, and upheld the validity of said Directive. I don’

From Politico: And now for some drama in Geneva, the United States has informed the chairman of the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body that it cannot support the reappointment of South Korean national Seung Wha Chang to the Appellate Body. The U.S. is concerned that some