Simon Lester

This is from the Strong Language blog, which bills itself as "A sweary blog about swearing" (in the excerpt below, I've deleted the controversial words from this family friendly blog!): Under the federal trademark statute, trademarks that are found to be “scandalous” can’t be registered

This is the intro of a new article by history professor Ben Coates, in the Journal of American History: On July 28, 1904, the gunboat Bolívar arrived in Guanoco, in northeastern Venezuela. It carried a contingent of Venezuelan soldiers with instructions to seize the property of the New York and

Maybe trade negotiators could negotiate about this: State and municipal governments in the United States each year offer some $80 billion in tax breaks and other subsidies to encourage large companies to do what they would do regardless — invest in new plants, office space and equipment in the hopes of

From the journal Trade, Law and Development: Call for Submissions Special Issue on Trade & Public Health Founded in 2009, the philosophy of Trade, Law and Development has been to generate and sustain a constructive and democratic debate on emergent issues in international economic law and to serve as a

Last week, I said that it wasn't clear to me how the "right to regulate" provision in the European Commission's proposed TTIP ISDS rules would function, or whether it would have any real impact.  Now I see that some people are worried it will

From NPR: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has come out against the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. ... "I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone XL pipeline as what I believe it is: a distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate

This position looks like it could be very appealing to some of you out there: The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin invites applicants to fill the newly endowed Victor Ramon Davila, Sr. Chair in International Trade Policy, beginning August 2016. The

The European Parliament's trade committee is having a fascinating discussion right now on ISDS: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/committees/video?event=20150921-1500-COMMITTEE-INTA  I'm watching live; hopefully an archived version will be available later. Someone raised a point about the

Now that the Commission has offered its reform proposal for ISDS in the TTIP, the politics of CETA get more interesting with regard to ISDS.  As I understand it, there is still some question about whether CETA needs only European parliamentary approval, or EU member state parliamentary approval as well,

This is from EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, in the context of discussing the newly propsed TTIP ISDS investment court: “We want to establish a new system built around the elements that make citizens trust domestic or international courts”, said EU trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom. Malmstrom, who is steering EU