On behalf of Rob and Petros, who are experiencing technical difficulties, I suggest those interested in international economic law consider attending the upcoming conference at Columbia.  It looks like a terrific line-up.

Traditional realist political science considers traditional international law "epiphenomenal," meaning that the real action is in hard power politics, and the law does not affect behavior.  Recent experience at the WTO suggests that international law can affect behavior. The U.S. Congress has recently taken action to comply

It is a pleasure to welcome Rob Howse, of University of Michigan Law School, to the blog.  Rob is one of the world's leading analysts of international trade law, and I look forward to his enlightening perspective.

See Pascal Lamy's major speech on the "Geneva Consensus."  Obviously, he is distinguishing the more focused market-oriented Washington Consensus.  His Geneva Consensus involves a focus on adjustment: We must create a new “Geneva consensus”: a new basis for the opening up of trade that takes

Well, something is happening at Davos.  There has been more discussion of the Doha agenda, and suggestions by Peter Mendelson that the developing countries will need to make some non-agricultural market access concessions in order to allow him to sell further agricultural liberalizatoin to Europe. But I have wondered

Well, this blog is about international economic law, so I am a bit conflicted about mentioning this.  On the other hand, it is a good international law story, and the arguments regarding the President's authority in the U.S. have important implications for U.S. foreign relations law

For years, my question to advocates of corporate social responsibility was "why should corporations be treated differently from other citizens."  In the international context, the question was "why should foreign corporations be treated differently from local corporations?"  "Why impose supra-standard regulation on firms, just

In two recent statements, Judge Richard Posner, one of the fathers of law and economics, has seemed to reject the "rule of law."  See the Jeffrey Toobin piece in The New Yorker, commenting on Posner's recent piece in the Harvard Law Review: Of the 2004-05

AFP reports that a U.S. official has said that the GMO report will arrive next Wednesday.  But in keeping with Beckett's work, it will not really arrive.  Rather, it will be an interim report that will be distributed to the parties, with the results immediately leaked.  So,

The FT reported yesterday that the U.S. is asking for more information about Chinese enforcement, including criminal enforcement, and penalties, for intellectual property infringement.  The U.S. is threatening WTO litigation for non-compliance with this request.  The U.S. made its request under Art. 63.3 of TRIPS.