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Simon Lester

Simon Lester

Co-founder of WorldTradeLaw.net and China Trade Monitor. Non-resident fellow at the Baker Institute.

http://simonlester.com

The Next WTO Moot Court Case

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

More on the ECJ's "Right to be Forgotten" as a Trade Barrier

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 Relationship between China’s Protocol of Accession and the GATT 1994: China – Rare Earths and the Incorporation Theory ― Off with its Head! (Part 1)

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

ISDS Forum

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

What Did the AB Mean in Seal Products?

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?

Examining Different Aspects of a Measure under Different Provisions

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

Should There Be a Single Non-Discrimination Obligation for Trade in Goods?

A lot of the discussion on the Seal Products case in previous posts highlights the difficulty of reconciling the various WTO non-discrimination obligations: GATT Articles I:1 and III:4; GATT Article III:4 and TBT 2.1; the GATT Article XX chapeau and TBT 2.1; etc. This

Let's Put the AB's New Article III:4 Test to the Test

It can be difficult to analyze legal standards in the abstract. To make things more concrete, I've got a hypo that we can test under the Article III:4 test that the AB set out in Seal Products. Imagine a regulation by Country X that categorizes cars as

Contrasting Views on the Seal Products Decision

Global Trade Watch: The WTO today added fuzzy white baby seals clubbed to death on bloody ice flows to dolphins and sea turtles as animals that the WTO has declared cannot be protected by domestic laws because they violate “trade” rules, which will just fuel public and policymaker skepticism about

There's No "Consistency" Requirement for Animal Welfare and Public Morals

From the Seal Products AB report: 5.200. Finally, by suggesting that the European Union must recognize the same level of animal welfare risk in seal hunts as it does in its slaughterhouses and terrestrial wildlife hunts, Canada appears to argue that a responding Member must regulate similar public moral