From a NY Times article today: Tobacco companies are pushing back against a worldwide rise in antismoking laws, using a little-noticed legal strategy to delay or block regulation. The industry is warning countries that their tobacco laws violate an expanding web of trade and investment treaties, raising the prospect of

Because it's difficult for readers to follow the comments section, I wanted to elevate this question from the comments to a post: Perhaps one of the lawyers at this blog, would elucidate what seems a tricky one: The TF involves in effect amendments or changes to, among others,

This is from Todd Tucker, formerly of Global Trade Watch and now doing a PhD at Cambridge University: Right now, investment treaty arbitration is making few people happy. Investors take years to launch and litigate them, and, best case scenario, they get payment – usually far less than what they asked

Apologies for this rant, but the new format for heading numbering in WTO dispute settlement reports is getting to me.  Here's the problem, taking the EC - Seal Products panel report as an example.  Let's say you are on p. 144, and you come to this

From Tim Lee of the Washington Post: In a trio of Supreme Court decisions between 1972 and 1981, the court held that mathematical algorithms were not eligible for patent protection. Since computer software is little more than mathematical algorithms encoded in machine-readable form, most of the software industry assumed this

Here's a fascinating, if somewhat confusing, leaked document related to the TPP: /content/files/1296_001.pdf It purports to be a breakdown of country negotiating positions on all the TPP issues.  But what are all these issues?  What is the "organics annex" of the TBT

The Energy Charter Secretariat invites applications for the position of Trade Expert. The Expert will deal with energy trade falling under the scope of the Energy Charter Treaty and its Trade Amendment as well as the trade-related policy recommendations of the Energy Charter Conference. In particular, The Expert will work

São Paulo (Brazil), 24 - 25 April 2014 Organised by PEPA/SIEL in cooperation with DIREITO GV – São Paulo Law School SIEL’s Postgraduate and Early Professional/Academics Network (PEPA/SIEL) is, among other things, interested in fostering collaboration and mentoring opportunities for emerging academics and professionals in IEL. PEPA/

As Sungjoon just mentioned, after many long days and nights, hard-working trade officials got a deal done in Bali.  Congrats to all of them, and I hope they get to take a long vacation now. (I noticed in my facebook feed that some other folks hanging out in Bali had

Finally, a happy ending!  The Bali package has been delivered after a couple of serious last-minute hiccups, such as here and here.  Concededly, the Bali package is subject to the typical half-full/half-empty evaluation.  True, the Bali Ministerial Conference was originally designed to be sort of “rescue exercise” even at