International Economic Law and Policy Blog

Sign in Subscribe

Simon Lester

Who's Going To Pay For Supporting The MPIA?

Paragraph 7 of the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement Pursuant to Article 25 of the DSU says: The participating Members envisage that appeal arbitrators will be provided with appropriate administrative and legal support, which will offer the necessary guarantees of quality and independence, given the nature of the responsibilities involved.

Webinar — USMCA’s Entry into Force: Prospects and Challenges for North American Trade

This is from the Baker Institute for Public Policy (link here): Although most observers agree that the renegotiation process of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was more complicated than it had to be and that the final text is less than perfect, at the end of the day

The Last Appellate Body Report (For Now)

The Appellate Body circulated its report in the Australia - Plain Packaging case today. I've only just started reading, but this passage jumped out at me: 6.48. The sheer volume of the appellants' claims under Article 11 of the DSU in these appellate proceedings is unprecedented.

What Would a Joe Biden Trade Policy Look Like?

It's hard to know when we will get back to the policy (or, at the least, political) debates that are part of U.S. presidential campaigns. We were distracted by a pandemic, and then by protests against systemic racism and related behavior by police, so there hasn'

The First MPIA Appeals?

The WTO has just posted three sets of agreed procedures for arbitration under DSU Article 25, that is to say, procedures for appeals through the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA). The cases involved are Canada - Sale of Wine (DS537), Costa Rica - Avocados (DS524), and Canada - Aircraft

Is the Trump Administration Just Being Legal Realist?

I was intrigued by something former USTR general counsel Stephen Vaughn said in his Trade Talks podcast last November: there's an old school of law that goes back to the 20s at Yale called Legal Realism, and the Legal Realists were people who believed that what matters is

Another MPIA Arbitrator Nomination

This is an announcement from New Zealand last week: The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade today announced Dr Penelope Ridings as New Zealand’s nomination for the pool of arbitrators established under the WTO interim appeals arrangement. The Ministry welcomes the Cabinet decision to nominate Dr Ridings

Theorizing Precedent in International Law

In light of the discussions of precedent in the previous two posts, I thought it might be worth posting something from a piece by law professor Harlan Cohen entitled Theorizing Precedent in International Law (I think he has more coming on this issue): The ingredients discussed in Part III—sources,

The Arguments Before the Appellate Body on "Precedent" in U.S. - Stainless Steel (Mexico)

The "cogent reasons" standard set out by the Appellate Body in U.S. - Stainless Steel (Mexico) (see paras. 154-162) has come under a great deal of criticism. But I think it's worth taking into account what the Appellate Body was hearing from the participants to

Precedent in GATT Dispute Settlement

There has been a lot of talk recently about how the Appellate Body has elevated its past rulings to the level of "binding precedent," and this is in contrast to how things worked with GATT panels. Senator Hawley was picking up on that point when he said the