Simon Lester

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

From the Seal Products AB report: 5.173. Finally, we note that, in US – Shrimp, the Appellate Body stated that it would not "pass upon the question of whether there is an implied jurisdictional limitation in Article XX(g), and if so, the nature or extent of that limitation&

The Appellate Body says the Panel erred in finding that the EU seal products measure is a technical regulation: 5.58. Having reviewed the relevant aspects of the EU Seal Regime, we see only one feature that may suggest that the measure lays down product characteristics, while all others suggest