Three new papers by Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann have just been posted at SSRN, and all look quite interesting.  They are as follows: 1. Multi-Level Judicial Trade Governance without Justice? On the Role of Domestic Courts in the WTO Legal and Dispute Settlement System 2. Justice in International Economic Law? From the

In any potential legal case against the Chinese Yuan, the measure of its alleged undervaluation is critical because of the necessary demonstration of the benefit criterion in a subsidy context. Moreover, in a CVD context, the countervailing duty must not be superior to the benefit inherent in the subsidy. In

Robert Reich proposes putting labor standards in trade agreements, which is nothing new, except for this part: Encourage developing nations to raise their labor standards as their economies grow. The easiest way to do this is to require that they set a minimum wage that's half their median

Yale Journal of International Law's fifth annual Young Scholars Conference will take place March 10 in New Haven.  The topic is The New New Haven School of International Law. They didn't have young scholars conferences when I was young.  Not that I'm jealous . . . .

Dan Ikenson of the Cato Institute and Robert Lighthizer of Skadden debate the fairness of the WTO dispute settlement system at CFR's web site.  Some excerpts: Ikenson: ... under what other international arrangements can a tiny country like Antigua and Barbuda win condemnation—and, in all likelihood, compel reform—

This is likely to be my first and only post about NASCAR. Reading my local paper today (the Palm Beach Post), I was struck by an article entitled "Toyota facing chilly reception in some NASCAR circles."  Apparently, Toyota has now entered some cars (they are a version of

My initial impression was that Indonesia was misbehaving, entering into a deal with Baxter HealthCare to provide Baxter with exclusive access to Indonesian avian flu virus samples, and declining to provide these samples to the World Health Organization. But let's think this through.  In formal terms, Indonesia happens

Nearly three decades ago, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued a celebrated decision, Cassis de Dijon, in which it established the principle of “mutual recognition.” The ECJ ruled in 1979 that “there is therefore no valid reason why, provided that they have been lawfully produced and marketed in one

Even if there have been few observations on the Biotech ruling from the perspective of the WTO-MEAs (Multilateral Environmental Agreements) debate, the fact is that the MEAs aspect of this ruling has apparently added something to this debate, although the ruling is puzzling through its ambivalence. 1) On the one

Given Japan's stated criteria for selecting potential FTA partners (most notably geographical proximity, trade and investment volume and resource wealth) as well as its obvious prioritization of East Asian nations (ostensibly to counter China’s growing power in the region), its negotiations with Switzerland at first appear rather