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

Plenty to think about when it comes to the “necessity” test applied by the AB to the EU seals ban (and especially the exceptions thereunder) under XX(a). What struck me, in particular, is how the AB set up the public morals justification as somehow fundamentally different from other objectives

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

To say the least, there is some puzzlement among WTO lawyers as to exactly why the AB found that the TBT Agreement did not apply to the EU ban on products from commercial seal hunts.   The AB refered to the fact that the EU ban was based on characteristics of

The AB has held, without ambiguity or qualification, that the EU Parliament's seal products ban is justified as "necessary" for the protection of public morals under GATT Article XX (a), because of the contribution of the ban to the reduction in the number of seals killed

Since the AB's  ruling in US-Cloves on TBT 2.1, where it introduced the notion that a measure does not violate National Treatment or MFN if  the detrimental effects on competition are due exclusively to a legitimate regulatory distinction, there has been much discussion on this blog and

This is the first in a series of posts on different specific aspects of the AB ruling in Seal Products.  On the big picture result, Jo Langille, Katie Sykes and I should be commenting in short order in a number of fora. With respect to MFN GATT Article I:1

The long-awaited Appellate Body (AB) report on the Seal dispute has just come out.  There have already been several postings on this report.  Let me focus on one particular issue: the “chapeau” test. In a nutshell, the AB integrated two strands of case law on the chapeau test (one in

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