Simon Lester

Just for fun, I've been reading the Working Party Report related to the recent Seychelles accession to the WTO (and yes, I am available to come to the Seychelles and give WTO training courses to government officials, in case they are looking for someone).  I saw three items

From the ASIL/ESIL/Max Planck: On 11-12 December 2015, the International Economic Law Interest Groups of the American and European Societies of International Law, together with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, will hold a joint works-in-progress workshop in Heidelberg, Germany.

Law profs Sergio Puig and Greg Shaffer want to get tobacco out of the TPP: The Obama administration is poised to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. If Congress passes the current trade promotion authority bill, the TPP will become subject to a simple up or down vote, without

This is from Inside U.S. Trade: the U.S. is negotiating market access [under the TPP] on the basis of bilateral offers, meaning it could end up imposing one tariff on Malaysian dairy products, for instance, and a different tariff for New Zealand. Here's my question: Would

I would not have thought so, but political scientists Ryan Brutger and Julia Morse have data that says so: Abstract: Can international courts ever be independent of state influence? If not, how do courts manage the tension between legal principles and political concerns? We address these questions through an analysis

From a political science paper by Fouad Pervez: What explains the variation in timing of WTO disputes over antidumping duties? Without a clear domestic opposition group, countries have incentives to bring up disputes as quickly as possible so as to limit the harm to their domestic industries subject to these

The 15th BIICL WTO conference will be held in London on May 6 and 7.  Details are here, and a draft program is here.  I'll be chairing a roundtable on regulatory trade issues, but if that doesn't excite you, there are also lots of other panels:

I've put together a Cato policy forum on telemedicine, May 28 in DC.  This goes beyond international trade.  I'll have some things to say about trade, but then we'll get into more general health policy and con law issues: In the United States and

This is President Obama talking about ISDS: "This is the notion that corporate America will be able to use this provision to eliminate our financial regulations and our food safety regulations and our consumer regulations. That’s just bunk. It’s not true. “ISDS is a form of dispute

I'm not going to stop criticizing ISDS, but while it is still here (and that may be for a long time), I'm going to look for ways to use it to promote my political preferences.  Here's an example: “THEY are jealous,” says Terry Branstad,