Trade negotiations are a topic of growing importance, and the popularity of bilateral and regional trade deals as an alternative to slow negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) is growing. But so is the anti-free trade sentiment among environmental and social-justice associations. Today, an important question is how free trade can be designed in a sustainable way. Based on the theoretical concept of two-level diplomacy, Astrid Fritz Carrapatoso analyzes whether domestic consultations help to further integrate trade-related environmental issues into trade agreements. Because the domestic dimension of international negotiations is often neglected, this study focuses on consultation procedures between the government and interest groups. Determinants for the integration of environmental aspects into trade agreements can thus be worked out. The book is aimed at scholars and students in the field of social sciences, economics, environmental studies, journalists interested in global and regional trade issues as well as environmental themes, politicians dealing with trade and environment issues and NGOs and other interest groups working in the environmental and/or trade sector.

Since the 1970s, securitization has become a major financial technique in the international financial arena. Most developed countries and some developing countries utilize it for financing and hedging credit risks. After the Basel II Accord was released in June 2004, true sale securitization transactions play an increasingly important role for banks to find cheap funding and therefore to gain or increase their competitiveness. All member states of the European Union will implement the Basel II Accord into their domestic laws. German banks and the German Federal Ministry of Finance are seeking new methods and policies to support them. The incentive for this study is provided by the similarities between the German and Chinese financial system. In addition, due to China's commitments to the World Trade Organization (WTO) China is under huge pressures to open its financial market to foreign banks. Analyzing the legal obstacles that lie in true sale securitization transactions in Germany, I will draw some useful conclusions for developing securitization in China.

Russia's accession negotiations to the WTO have been dragging on for over a decade. An exact entry date has not been set as of the time of this writing. Various challenges remain which leave the largest accession candidate and former communist country as one of the few states outside the world trading system. What are the key challenges that need solving? Is there a linkage to the country's economic past? Do political reasons play a role? The author introduces the topic by giving a comprehensive introduction to the WTO system as well as the formal accession process. Following a detailed analysis of the economic transition process, including the elements of liberalization, privatization, stabilization and institutional building gives an idea of Russia's economic particularities. Based on these findings, the investigation into Russia's current condition in the accession process gives an in-depth view of the country's current economic situation, its trading system and the challenged that need solving before becoming a member of the WTO. The book addresses university students, in particular in the field of economics and international studies, scholars and people interested in the topic of the international trading system.

This is the last of three volumes dealing with the International Legal Environment (see list in back of book), included in the Collected Research Studies of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada. The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 3) culminated in the adopted of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea in 1982. Since then 150 countries, including Canada, have signed this historic treaty. It affects Canada's four major ocean industries: fishing, offshore petroleum, shipping and ocean mining. As Canada contemplates ratification of this agreement, it must consider these as well as several other maritime matters, including transit management, offshore development, marine-technology development and ocean-science policy. This volume delineates the issues and their implications for Canada's future at sea, and recommends the establishment of an independent advisory body to ensure serious and comprehensive treatment of maritime concerns.

Now in its sixth edition, this key text provides a comprehensive analysis of the international carriage of goods by road under the provisions of the CMR Convention. The author offers unparalleled coverage of both English and European case law in a text that is praised for its accessible, user-friendly style.

This new edition is fully updated with the very latest in case law both internationally and on a domestic level, including:

It also provides new coverage of the impact of e-commerce on road haulage.

This book is an invaluable reference tool for transport practitioners with an international and domestic client base. It is also a useful guide for academics and students of the carriage of goods by road.

Global lawmaking by international organizations holds the potential for enormous influence over world trade and national economies. Representatives from states, industries, and professions produce laws for worldwide adoption in an effort to alter state lawmaking and commercial behaviors, whether of giant multi-national corporations or micro, small and medium-sized businesses. Who makes that law and who benefits affects all states and all market players. Global Lawmakers offers the first extensive empirical study of commercial lawmaking within the United Nations. It shows who makes law for the world, how they make it, and who comes out ahead. Using extensive and unique data, the book investigates three episodes of lawmaking between the late 1990s and 2012. Through its original socio-legal orientation, it reveals dynamics of competition, cooperation and competitive cooperation within and between international organizations, including the UN, World Bank, IMF and UNIDROIT, as these IOs craft international laws. Global Lawmakers proposes an original theory of international organizations that seek to construct transnational legal orders within social ecologies of lawmaking. The book concludes with an appraisal of creative global governance by the UN in international commerce over the past fifty years and examines prospective challenges for the twenty-first century.

AI and people do not compete on a level-playing field. Self-driving vehicles may be safer than human drivers, but laws often penalize such technology. People may provide superior customer service, but businesses are automating to reduce their taxes. AI may innovate more effectively, but an antiquated legal framework constrains inventive AI. In The Reasonable Robot, Ryan Abbott argues that the law should not discriminate between AI and human behavior and proposes a new legal principle that will ultimately improve human well-being. This work should be read by anyone interested in the rapidly evolving relationship between AI and the law.

International commercial contracts in the context of increasing globalization of the national markets have posed some of the most difficult questions of the legal theory as developed since the emergence of nation states; those are, whether it is possible or desirable to allow international commercial contracts to be governed by the law merchant or, in its medieval name, lex mercatoria, a body of rules which has not been derived from the will of sovereign states, but mainly from transnational trade usages and practices, and to what extent those rules should govern transnational transactions. The traditional approach of legal positivism to the questions maintains that law governing contracts containing a foreign element should be a national law which will be determined according to choice of law rules. However, the particularities of cross border trade yield unsatisfactory results when the rules essentially designed for the settlement of domestic disputes or national laws pertaining to international economic relations, but developed under the influence of a certain legal tradition, are tried to be applied. New solutions are needed to overcome the special problems of international trade between merchants from different legal systems. In that regard, while the international commercial arbitration which has been freed from the constraints of the domestic laws is an important step, the courts generally applying the principle of party autonomy which allows parties to designate the law that will apply to their transactions have proved insufficient due to the positivistic influence on the conflict of laws rules of most countries which has limited parties' choice of law to the national substantive laws. The problems created by those inconsistencies and divergences have been felt more strongly in the European Community which constitutes an internal market by integrating the national markets of Member States into a single one. The present paper is an attempt to search for answers to those questions with a special emphasis on the situation in the European Community on the basis of the idea that law as a servant of social need must take account of the far reaching and dramatic socio-economic changes.

During the Iran-Iraq war, hundreds of merchant vessels were attacked, more than 400 seamen killed and millions of dollars' worth of damages were suffered by owners, charterers and insurers. In the most sustained assault on merchant shipping since the Second World War, the control of shipping routes, destruction of enemy and enemy-allied ships, and the protection of oil exports, were key objectives.
These campaigns touched the economic and security interests of the Gulf states by threatening their exports and highlighting their political and military vulnerability. The ripples of the tanker wars extended well beyond the region with attacks on vessels with foreign flags which invoked international concern and drew in foreign naval forces.