Unlike the rest of the world, I have made it a practice not to read leaked WTO panel reports.  I do this out of respect for the integrity of the WTO dispute settlement system.  Therefore, I did not have occasion to consider tackling the new Biotech report until it was

It appears that the EC has decided not to appeal the panel ruling in Biotech.  Why?  And what are the jurisprudential and practical implications of this decision?

In the ongoing retreaded tires dispute, part of Brazil's defense is that it should be able to restrict imports of used tires because of the environmental damage they cause.  But the problem seems to be a more general one, applying to other forms of waste products: Devising measures

Following up on Joel's post that the "Russians are Coming," Evraz Group SA, a steel maker partly owned by billionaire Roman Abramovich, agreed to buy Oregon Steel Mills Inc. for $2.3 billion, the biggest-ever purchase in the U.S. by a Russian company. http:

Over at Opinio Juris, Roger Alford has an interesting post on the precautionary principle.  Among other things, he notes: Of course, there are mild and strong versions of the precautionary principle. As Cass Sunstein has noted in this article, a mild version rather benignly posits that "a lack of

I suppose that the irony of the U.S. and Russia reaching agreement in Hanoi, of all places, on a bilateral agreement to move forward with Russia's accession, was lost on no one.  Does this move have geopolitical significance?  Putin thinks so:  "This creates a favourable background

Advocacy and rhetoric aside, Oxfam's report on the implementation of the "Paragraph 6 Public Health" TRIPS amendment on patent protection is pretty damning. Much of the objection is against TRIPS-plus and political pressure preventing states with generic medicine production capacity from exercising rights under the

In an earlier post, I quoted the Economist taking the view that the new Democratic Congress would be more skeptical on trade issues.  Now someone has tried to quantify this point.  Simon Evenett and Michael Meier of the Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic Research at the University

A few weeks ago, I did a post relating to a summary of the recent Hormones panel meetings, by Anna-Emilia Autio and Petko Kantchevski: * Wednesday, September 27, 2006, meeting of Panel with parties and scientific experts (notes of Petko Kantchevski) * Thursday, September 28, 2006, meeting of Panel with parties