Simon Lester

If we want trade agreements to be enforceable, there needs to be a dispute settlement process that functions. The WTO process works well because you have a Secretariat and a Director-General to oversee it.  By contrast, as I understand things, NAFTA Chapter 20 has broken down in the panelist selection

From the SIEL: The Society of International Economic Law has extended until November 20 the deadline to submit paper and panel proposals for its 2016 conference, which will be held from 7-9 July in Johannesburg at the University of the Witwatersrand.  The extended call for papers is here.

From PEPA/SIEL: 5th Conference of the Postgraduate and Early Professionals/Academics Network of the Society of International Economic Law (PEPA/SIEL) 2016 Luxembourg, 14-15 April 2016 Organised by PEPA/SIEL in collaboration with the Research Unit in Law of the University of Luxembourg SIEL’s Postgraduate and Early Professionals/

This is from Peter Van den Bossche: The passing of John Jackson leaves us with a feeling of tremendous loss. So many of us owe John so much! He was our teacher, mentor, inspirator, colleague and friend and never ceased to encourage, support and advise us throughout our career. We

On Friday, President Obama announced the rejection of Canadian company TransCanada's application to build the Keystone XL pipeline.  He offered a brief explanation here. I'm puzzled by his explanation.  The first reason he gave is that the pipeline would not have created as many jobs as

Following up on my post from last week, just to clarify, I didn't meant to suggest there is a conflict between NAFTA ISDS and TPP ISDS. I wasn't thinking about conflicts at all. (Although I also don't mean to suggest there is no conflict.

This is from Ted Posner, who left it as a comment, but I'm putting it in a separate post: My comment concerns the relationship between "investment damages" and "trade damages." Take a look at article 9.28.2 of the newly released TPP text.

This is from trade lawyer Luiz Eduardo  Salles: The TPP text has been made public. The text is yet subject to legal scrubbing by the signatories, but this version should be nearly identical to the finally authenticated text. There is great excitement with the TPP given the potentially novel disciplines

One issue I've been wondering about for a while is how TPP ISDS will interact with NAFTA ISDS (and ISDS in other FTAs between the TPP parties).  For example, if a Canadian investor in the U.S. wants to bring an investment claim, what would its options be

The TPP "Drafter’s Note on Interpretation of 'In Like Circumstances'" is here. In paragraph 2, it says:  "Articles II.4 [NT] and II.5 [MFN] do not prohibit all measures that result in differential treatment. Rather, they seek to ensure that foreign investors or