As I tweeted earlier, a dramatic moment occured in the Seal Products hearing this morning, when the chair of the panel took the view that once a panel  has been approved by the DSB whether the original request is defective is merely a matter of academic interest and of no

Toward the end of the afternoon, the focus became the comparison of the non-indigenous non-marine management seal hunt in Canada with the indigenous seal hunt in Greenland.  Norway insisted that both hunts are really "commercial" since they are both on a significant scale, both involve the

If paranoid people can have enemies, then a cliche can be true.  So, today, a picture is worth a thousand words.  The hearing quickly broke out of the anachronistic ritual of exchanges of written texts read word for word as the EU screened graphic videos of seals writhing in agony

My main posts on today's session of the Seals hearing are a few hours away, but there is one particular strategem of Norway that I thought I'd comment on right away—it concerns a question that Ruti Teitel and I have written on recently, the use

The Peterson Institute has published an interesting paper by two very good economists, Aaditya Mattoo and Arvind Subramanian, about trade and climate mitigation.bit.ly/ZQLATw  While as a matter of economics I rather like the Joe Stiglitz conceptualization of the problem better than theirs, then again I am not

I think there is an end to my saga of not finding Blanco's website.  Late yesterday I found a different site than the one originally listed on his twitter page.  This is it.  http://bit.ly/168q9Bm.  But then I also discovered that the link on the Twitter

As I recently tweeted, over the last 24 hours I've tried to access WTO Director General candidate Herminio Blanco's website on 4 different devices (the last one an open computer in the Swiss lounge in JFK airport, so it's nothing to do with my

It's pretty clear that the pro-seal hunt interests are hurting hard from their loss at the ECJ.  One spokesperson appeared to accuse the Court of being "self-serving" and lacking a "fair or just process."  That doesn't seem very consistent, to

This is from the second EU written submission in seal products: 199. Canada considers that the EU Seal Regime, through the IC exception, modifies the conditions of competition to the detriment of its imports when compared with imports of Greenland. Specifically, Canada suggests that, in the case of an origin-

Further to Simon's post, I am not an EU law expert, but I do think that, in particular, the findings of the ECJ on proportionality are relevant to the WTO dispute.  Here they are: Second, the applicants’ argument that the basic regulation goes beyond what is necessary to