Simon Lester

Recall that the Australia - Korea FTA had a general exception to the investment obligations.  Now here's the one in the just released Canada - Korea FTA: 3. For the purposes of Chapter Eight (Investment), subject to the requirement that those measures are not applied in a manner

Whether plain packaging is effective at discouraging smoking could be an important issue in the WTO plain packaging dispute.  What does the evidence show?  Not surprisingly, there is some disagreement. On the "it works" side, there's this: Australia’s landmark cigarette legislation banning logos and putting

For you law professors out there searching for a good exam question, take a look at this fact pattern from an Economist article: IN PALAU, the traditional prescription for an ailing reef is a fishing ban called a bul. Local chiefs may declare a bul to rest a busy fishing

A while back, I was thinking about the Australian plain packaging law, and it occurred to me that people were saying "plain package" and "cigarettes" together quite a lot, and the terms are now associated closely with one another.  With that in mind, wouldn't

Many of you have been involved in some capacity in the ELSA WTO Moot Court competition. It may have occurred to you that it would be fun to write up a case that would drive students completely nuts teach students a lot about WTO law.  If so, here's

From a recent op-ed: This month’s bombshell decision from the European Court of Justice pronouncing a “right to be forgotten” on the Internet was couched as a principled stand for digital privacy. Looking closer, however, one could see a double standard at work: The enormously expensive effects of the

by André de Hoogh, cross-posted from the GUILD-blog Introduction Last March, a WTO panel issued its report on a dispute between the European Union, the United States and Japan on the one hand and China on the other concerning export duties imposed on certain rare earths, tungsten and molebdynum (here

For those of you who could not attend, here's the video of our ISDS policy forum at Cato: http://www.cato.org/events/investor-state-dispute-settlement-mechanism-examination-benefits-costs I think we had a pretty good back and forth, with reasonable people on all sides. My favorite part, though, was Lori Wallach of

We've had some good discussions of the Seal Products AB report here on this blog over the past week or so.  There are definitely some differences of opinion as to what the AB meant in relation to the GATT non-discrimination obligations.  When will we get some clarification? It

I continue to be frustrated and perplexed by an approach to GATT Article III and XX that considers different aspects of a measure in different parts of the legal analysis.  In that regard, here are some excerpts from the Seal Products AB report: Article I:1 5.95. We note