Simon Lester

The Appellate Body's approach of taking longer than 90 days to issue its reports, without first getting consent from the participants in the dispute, is one issue that has given rise to the U.S. actions relating to appointment of Appellate Body Members. Apparently, this approach (along with

As I've blogged about before, there was a problem with getting panels appointed under NAFTA Chapter 20, and Chapter 31 of the new NAFTA (USMCA) doesn't look like it fixes the problem. But there is a small tweak to the rules relating to rosters that is

This is a timely piece from Graham Cook: For those interested here is a new paper called "The Legalization of the Non-Violation Concept in the GATT/WTO System". The abstract: Article XXVIII:1(b) of the GATT refers to "any benefit … being nullified or impaired" by

Article 23.9 of the USMCA text as it stands now says: Article 23.9 Sex-Based Discrimination in the Workplace The Parties recognize the goal of eliminating sex-based discrimination in employment and occupation, and support the goal of promoting equality of women in the workplace. Accordingly, each Party shall implement

In response to the recent post by Nicolas and the subsequent comments, as well as some twitter and email exchanges on the issue, I wanted to offer a few thoughts on the role of WTO exceptions in the context of non-violation claims. To state the obvious, WTO obligations are not

This is from a new paper by former Canadian government official Rob McDougall: the Appellate Body could be given the authority to decide which appeals, or which parts of appeals, to hear (certiorari), based on broadly defined circumstances such as when panel reports risk creating inconsistency, demonstrate evidence of manifest

PluriCourts Annual Workshop on The Political and Legal Theory of International Courts and Tribunals 2019: Multilevel Separation of Authority - Autonomy and International Courts June 24-26, 2019, University of Oslo Deadline: 1 December, 2018 Homepage: https://www.jus.uio.no/pluricourts/english/news-and-events/news/2018/workshop-on-the-political-and-legal-theory-of-inte.html Call for Papers

The Editorial Board of the Journal of International Economic Law is seeking papers for a forthcoming special issue on ‘Trade Wars’, planned for publication in late 2019. This special issue seeks to take stock of the current trade wars, provide an explanation of their causes and conditions of possibility, and

This is a guest post from law professor Nicolas Lamp: There is no doubt that, over the past year, trade officials in WTO Members have spent countless hours agonizing over the appropriate response to Trump’s national security tariffs on steel and aluminium. They have come up with a number

This is from Inside US Trade: In addition to the cultural carveout, [Jesús] Seade, [the chief NAFTA negotiator for Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador], touted the USMCA’s dispute settlement system, particularly Chapter 20 state-to-state dispute resolution, along with the deal’s provisions for small and medium-sized enterprises and