I recall many years ago conversations about how interim review in the WTO panel process was a waste of time, and we should get rid of it.  It had been proposed as a way to improve the quality of panel reports, but appellate review served that same purpose, so there

International trade law covers so much these days that it's hard to write a treatise or casebook on it in less than 1,000 pages.  Trust me on this, or give it a try yourself. Law prof Michael Trebilcock has just given it a try, with some success.

It turns out that when you have trade negotiations with only a select group of countries, other countries are left out.  Often, those who are left out are developing countries.  What's the impact of having "mega-regional" trade talks that exclude most developing countries?  Some people are

This is from Canada's counter-memorial submission in the Eli Lilly NAFTA Chapter 11 case: 213. First, Article 1105(1) requires the NAFTA Parties to accord to investors and their investments the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens. That standard, as has been overwhelmingly affirmed in

The European Commission has put forward a proposal for implementing the WTO Seal Products decision. Here's the Commission's summary of the proposal: With regard to the MRM exception, the contested discriminatory treatment can only be remedied by removing the MRM exception from the Basic Regulation as

As discussed here, one key issue in the U.S. claim against Guatemala under the CAFTA labor provisions is whether that failure to enforce labor laws was done "in a manner affecting trade between the Parties."  In its written submission, Guatemala criticizes the U.S. view of this

Call for Papers Sociological Inquiries into International Law II 9-10 October 2015 Workshop Theme A growing community of scholars is bringing international law into conversation with sociological research and theory. Major developments over the past years have come from studies across all subfields of international law, from human rights and

Over at Opinio Juris, there's a post about a new book by Jens David Ohlin, called The Assault on International Law. Here's the publisher's description: International law presents a conceptual riddle. Why comply with it when there is no world government to enforce it?