International Economic Law and Policy Blog (Page 243)

International Economic Law and Policy Blog

Sign in Subscribe

Is the Appellate Body Trying To Discourage DSU Article 11 Appeals?

I haven't crunched the numbers on this, but it certainly feels as though DSU Article 11 appeals have increased in recent years. Yet almost all of them get rejected. This seems like a strange state of affairs. Why pursue a course that is virtually certain to fail? In

CETA, ISDS, and Religious Discrimination: The Burqa Ban

In the comments of this post, we talked about the scope of the "targeted discrimination" aspects of the fair and equitable treatment obligation in the leaked CETA investment chapter. The relevant language is as follows: Article X.9: Treatment of Investors and of Covered Investments ... 2. A Party

Legal Aspects of Domestic Economic Integration: Canadian Reform Proposals

This is from a paper by some Canadian business groups on promoting internal free trade within Canada through reform of Canada's Agreement on Internal Trade: A more effective and efficient dispute resolution mechanism should include ... a domestic equivalent of investor-state dispute settlement, ... . Investor-state dispute settlement normally grants foreign

APEC’s Complementarity to the WTO via Plurilateral Agreements

Now that the WTO members failed to adopt the protocol on the Trade Facilitation (TF) Agreement, APEC members try to fill in the gap. APEC Leaders instructed their officials to work toward the APEC TF Agreement between APEC members and other WTO members. The Chair of the APEC Committee on

Russia’s Account of Negotiation History: Reason for Deletion Further Explained

On the question raised in my last post – what was the reason for deleting from Russia’s accession protocol the sentence on non-derogation of its rights under the WTO Agreement – I have now located further explanation in Annex C-9 to the Panel Report in Rare Earths, INTEGRATED EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF

What Should the U.S. Judge in the Argentina Debt Case Have Done?

I'm still trying to sort out what I think should happen in the Argentina debt crisis case. I gather that a lot of people are mad at the U.S. judge who prevented Argentina from making payments to those creditors who had agreed to restructure the debt, allowing

Negotiation History and Interpretation of WTO Accession Protocols

As indicated in my previous post, South Korea, a third party in the Rare Earths appeal, advocated referencing negotiation history in the interpretation of Paragraph 11.3 of China’s Accession Protocol. Para. 2.7.7of the AB Report reads in part: In Korea's view, the interpretation pursuant

CETA, Investment Obligations, and Exceptions

With each attempt to clarify the "minimum standard of treatment" in investment obligations, the scope becomes less clear to me. Here's what the leaked CETA text says (page 158): Article X.9: Treatment of Investors and of Covered Investments 1. Each Party shall accord in its

CETA Dispute Settlement: Reference to WTO Jurisprudence

From Article 14.10 of the leaked CETA text (page 474): 5. The panel shall interpret the provisions referred to in Article 14.2 in accordance with customary rules of interpretation of public international law, including those set out in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The panel

CETA Text: The Treatment of Water

A fairly recent version of the CETA text has been leaked. The document date is August 1, 2014. No doubt there is some legal "scrubbing" still to do, and perhaps some actual negotiating as well, but this text seems pretty advanced, and thus ready for blogging. I'