Two interesting proposals have recently emerged in an attempt to save thousands of lives in poor countries who are suffering from fatal diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. First, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and representatives from 95 countries gathered in Paris today to study France's "

An article in today's Wall Street Journal suggests that the excitement over the proposed takeover of P&O by Dubai Ports World has its origins in a private contract dispute. The article suggests that a Florida stevedoring firm locked in litigation with P & O has sought

It looks like France is finding itself on the "other" side of an SPS case.  Today's FT reports that 20 countries have determined to block poultry imports from France. Franz-Josef Feiter, secretary general of Copa-Cogeca, the European farmers’ lobby, said the bans were not justified, because

A "bio-piracy" case to watch: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/international/africa/21lake.html?_r=1 (free registration required). Some earlier reports ( http://www.grain.org/bio-ipr/?id=409 ) mention that Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors, Inc. (http://www.piipa.org/) have been retained to pursue

It's an unheard of, 8-month old case from a negligible jurisdiction in global terms, but potentially interesting to bloggers and bloggees nevertheless: HCJ 2587/04 Bukhris et al. v. Hedera Tax Assessor, 23.6.05, a petition brought before the Israeli Supreme Court sitting as High Court of

For all we know, the GMO panel faulted the EC on two grounds.  First, EC approval procedures have been subject to “undue delay” (Annex C.1(a)).  Second, safeguard restrictions imposed by certain EC member states against GMOs that were approved at the EC level, are not based on a

A number of recent panels have dealt with scheduling issues. In GATS especially, there seems to be dissatisfaction across Members with the manne rin which the Mexico - Telecoms and the US - Gambling reports came out. The former clearly states in a rather lengthy footnote that moving away from

There is an interesting review of Sunstein's controversial book - The Laws of Fear - and a reply by Cass Sunstein in the Feb. issue of the Harvard Law Review. The review is by Paul Slovic among others and takes issue with Sunstein for ignoring cultural perceptions on

The proposed legislation to ban foreign-government-owned firms from managing US ports has been defended by some as a national security measure. At some level of generality, of course, GATT law regards national security claims as self judging and therefore unreviewable (I have a discussion of this issue in my forthcoming

Well, I woke up early this morning, checked my e-mail and saw a notification from the WTO that the chat was about to begin.  I thought to myself "I'm late, so I will never get admitted--the limit is 500 chatters."  I suppose I got lucky, because