The book provides both a legal and economic assessment of an increasingly important issue for the EU: the question of whether individuals can hold the European Union liable for damages they suffer due to its infringement of international economic law. However, liability regimes vary depending on the issue concerned. In international trade law the individual holds a weak position, being deprived of both legal remedies to seek annulment and damages. This is due to the constant refusal of the direct effect of WTO law. By contrast, international investment law has been designed in an 'individualistic' manner from the outset - states agree reciprocally to grant certain procedural and substantial individual rights, which they invoke to claim damages before international tribunals rather than domestic courts. The divergent role of the individual in the respective area of international economic law leads to a different set of research questions related to liability. In international trade law, the doctrinal exercise of de-coupling the notion of direct effect from liability is at the core of establishing liability. In international investment law, liability is connected to a number of issues emerging from the recent transfer of competence pertaining to investment issues from Member States to the EU and the nature of investment agreements as mixed agreements. Against this backdrop, exploring liability issues in the area of international economic law reveals a heterogeneous set of questions depending on the area of law concerned, thus offering different perspectives for studying liability issues.

As we move further into the 21st century, it is incumbent upon lawyers and law students to understand and manage the complexities of sustainable development. International Development Law: Rule of Law, Human Rights, and Global Finance offers a coherent and systematic overview of the many issues and underlying trends that affect 'international development law' and the underlying legal architecture between developing countries and advanced nations. Professor Sarkar describes how international development works, its shortcomings, its theoretical and practical foundations, along with the prescriptions for the future. The text is structured into two basic parts: the first part deals with the theoretical and philosophic foundations of the subject, and the second part sets forth issues relating to the international financial architecture, namely, international borrowing practices, privatization, and emerging economies. International Development Law provides the reader with new perspectives on the origins of global poverty, identifies legal impediments to sustainable economic growth, and provides a better understanding of the challenges faced by the international community in resolving global policy issues.

This volume examines the range of Non-Trade Concerns (NTCs) that may conflict with international economic rules and proposes ways to protect them within international law and international economic law. Globalization without local concerns can endanger relevant issues such as good governance, human rights, right to water, right to food, social, economic, cultural and environmental rights, labor rights, access to knowledge, public health, social welfare, consumer interests and animal welfare, climate change, energy, environmental protection and sustainable development, product safety, food safety and security. Focusing on China, the book shows the current trends of Chinese law and policy towards international standards. The authors argue that China can play a leading role in this context: not only has China adopted several reforms and new regulations to address NTCs; but it has started to play a very relevant role in international negotiations on NTCs such as climate change, energy, and culture, among others. While China is still considered a developing country, in particular from the NTCs' point of view, it promises to be a key actor in international law in general and, more specifically, in international economic law in this respect. This volume assesses, taking into consideration its special context, China's behavior internally and externally to understand its role and influence in shaping NTCs in the context of international economic law.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the European Sustainability Model which cannot be properly understood without taking into account the global governance trends surrounding the topic. The author offers a fresh analysis of both theory and praxis of sustainable development in the open-ended process of EU integration by shedding new light on the often-overlooked role that law and legal science should have within the educational and cultural domains. The monograph explores the necessity of new conceptual and methodological approaches in order to understand the emerging educational and cultural challenges when it comes to their integration and intersection with sustainability in today's society, which desperately claims systemic transformations.

Food safety has become a major concern for consumers in the developed world and Europe in particular. This has been highlighted by the recent spate of food scares ranging from the BSE (mad cow) crisis to Chinese melamine contamination of baby formula. To ensure food safety throughout Europe, stringent food safety standards have been put in place 'from farm to fork'. At the same time, poor African countries in the COMESA rely on their food exports to the European market to achieve their development goals yet have difficulty meeting the EU food safety standards. This book examines the impact of EU food safety standards on food imports from COMESA countries. It also critically examines both EU and COMESA food safety standards in light of the WTO SPS Agreement and the jurisprudence of the WTO panels and Appellate Body. The book makes ground-breaking proposals on how the standards divide between the EU and the COMESA can be bridged and discusses the impact of EU food safety standards on food imports from poor African countries.

Professor Fischer presents a comprehensive overview of global trade at the start of a new century, from a national, regional, and international viewpoint. He looks closely at the four dominant and competing economic systems--the United States, the European Union, Japan, and China--and argues that the traditional we-win/you-lose national trade paradigm has been replaced by one that is more collaborative, one that is leaning toward de facto world governance. He compares foreigners' attitudes toward trade and markets with our own, using four economic models that typify world trade today. He examines the interface between national, regional, and international trading systems and between business and government, then at the prospect of global trade management in different trade sectors under the GATT/WTO and other organizations. The result is a provocative discussion of global trade today.

Professor Fischer makes it clear that the United States needs allies. Though its influence in the world trade arena will continue, America's hegemony has ended. The European Union is America's most obvious ally, but it has many problems and ambitions of its own. The North American Free Trade Agreement has solidified the North American market but it may isolate and lose South America, while Japan, China, Russia, and others are left to develop alliances of their own. All these factors raise important global questions, among them: Can American capitalism prevail? Should the United States proceed unilaterally, as it has so often? Or are regional and multinational arrangements preferable? If there is further globalization, as seems inevitable, and if American influence is on the wane, what group or organization will lead? To explore these questions and provide the beginnings of answers, Professor Fischer uses his four competing economic systems and handicaps the process country by country, sector by sector, with particular attention to transatlantic relations.

The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of international economic law as a major force in the international legal system. This force has been severely tested by the economic crisis of 2008. Unable to prevent the crisis, the existing legal mechanisms have struggled to react against its direst consequences. This book brings together leading experts to analyse the main causes of the crisis and the role that international economic law has played in trying to prevent it, on the one hand, and worsening it, on the other. The work highlights the reaction and examines the tools that have been created by the international legal field to implement international cooperation in an effort to help put an end to the crisis and avoid similar events in the future. The volume brings together eminent legal academics and economists to examine key issues from the perspectives of trade law, financial law, and investment law with the collective aim of reform of international economic governance.

The fight between North and South over intellectual property (IP) reached new heights in the 1990s. In one corner, large multinational companies and developed countries sought to protect their investments. Opposing them, developing countries argued for the time and scope to pursue development strategies unshackled by rules forged to bolster the competitiveness of richer countries. The result was the WTO's deeply contested Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Widely resented by developing countries, TRIPS nonetheless permits them some hard-won flexibility. Puzzling, however, is why some developing countries have used that flexibility and others have not. Even more curious is that many of the poorest countries have made least use of the room for manouevre, despite securing some extra concessions. For developing countries, TRIPS did not end the pro-IP offensive. At the urging of industry lobbyists, powerful countries backtracked on the flexibilities in TRIPS and pursued even stronger global IP rules. To prevent precedents for weaker IP standards in poorer countries, they issued threats to market access, aid, investment, and political alliances. Further, they used new trade deals and, more subtly, capacity building (assisted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, among others) to leverage faster compliance and higher standards than TRIPS requires. Meanwhile, 'pro-development' advocates from civil society, other UN agencies, and developing countries worked to counter 'compliance-plus' pressures and defend the use of TRIPS flexibilities, sometimes with success. Within developing countries, most governments had little experience of IP laws and deferred TRIPS implementation to IP offices cut-off from trade politics and national policymaking, making them more vulnerable to the TRIPS-plus agenda. In many of the poorest African countries, regional IP arrangements magnified this effect. For scholars of international political economy and law, this book is the first detailed exploration of the links between global IP politics and the implementation of IP reforms. It exposes how power politics occur not just within global trade talks but afterwards when countries implement agreements. The Implementation Game will be of interest to all those engaged in debates on the global governance of trade and IP

A new international instrument is needed to address access to interoperability standards and standards-essential intellectual property, which are critical to maintaining technological advancement and promoting cost-effective solutions for consumers. Applying law and economics methodologies, Simon Brinsmead systematically explores how international and domestic law deals with these matters. This important book includes an examination of the technical and economic nature of interoperability standards; a detailed analysis of the issues arising under intellectual property and competition law; an analysis of whether liability or exclusive property rules should apply with respect to interoperability standards and SEIP; and consideration of feasible international approaches. Finally, Brinsmead includes a draft of his proposed international soft law instrument as a starting point for future discussions in the field. Of interest to lawyers, regulators and scholars, this work offers a meaningful contribution to international governance, harmonization of laws and technological advancement.

There is a common perception of reciprocity as a concept that is opposed to the communitarian interests that characterise contemporary international law, or merely a way of denoting reactions to unfriendly or wrongful conduct. This book disputes this approach, and highlights how reciprocity is instead linked to the structural characteristic of sovereign equality of States in international law. This book carries out an in-depth analysis of the concept of reciprocity and the elements that characterise it, before examining the various roles and articulations of reciprocity in a number of fields of public international law: the law of treaties, the treatment of individuals, the execution of international law, and the jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals. In all these areas, it analyses both more traditional and more contemporary examples, to demonstrate how reciprocity is closely linked to the very structure of public international law.

The WTO Agreement on Agriculture subjects different groups of developed and developing countries to different limits on domestic support and allows various exemptions from these limits. Offering a comprehensive assessment of the Agreement's rules and implementation, this book develops guidance toward socially desirable support policies. Although dispute settlement has clarified interpretation of the Agriculture and SCM Agreements, gaps remain between the legal disciplines and the economic effects of support. Considering the Agriculture Agreement also in the context of today's priorities of sustainability and climate change mitigation, Lars Brink and David Orden build a strategy that aligns the rules and members' commitments with the economic impacts of agricultural support measures. While providing in-depth analysis of the existing rules, their shortcomings and the limited scope of ongoing negotiations, the authors take a long-term view, where policies directed toward evolving priorities in agriculture are compatible with strengthened rules that reduce trade and production distortions.

International trade rules have significant impacts on environmental law and policy, at the domestic, regional and global levels. At the World Trade Organization (WTO), dispute settlement tribunals are increasingly called to decide on environment- and health-related questions. Can governments treat products differently based on environmental considerations? Can they block the import of highly carcinogenic asbestos-containing products or genetically modified crops? Does the WTO allow governments to protect dolphins or endangered sea turtles through the use of import restrictions on certain products? How can civil society participate in WTO dispute settlement? This Guide, authored by five world leaders on international environmental and trade law at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), is an accessible, comprehensive, one-of-a-kind compendium of environment and trade jurisprudence under the WTO. Providing an overview for both experts and non-experts of the major themes relevant to environment and trade, it also analyses how WTO tribunals have approached these themes in concrete disputes and provides selected excerpts of the most significant cases.

This book places international trade law within an economic,political and sociological context, contending that globalisation is characterised by both homogeneity and diversity. However, while implying changes within contracting parties, globalisation only results in a 'thin' homogeneity. Furthermore, globalisation is the result of the interaction, negotiations and policies between states. From this perspective, the book attempts to explain trade policy as resulting from domestic factors. Thus, if globalisation is characterised by diversity, how do such differences affect the trade policy of states in an era where nearly everything is subject to commerce? The book focuses on the US and the EC, analysing different institutional and substantive aspects of unfair trade instruments, such as anti-dumping and countervailing measures and market access instruments. Domestically, it focuses on both constitutional and socio-economic constraints. The book considers political action prescribed by formal constitutions in a wider socio-economic context, rejecting the a-historical and structurally blind normative idea of free trade.

This insightful and accessible introduction provides students and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the increasingly important discipline of international investment law. Focusing primarily on the legal principles contained in the growing body of international investment agreements, this book covers the core concepts of the discipline, with attention given to their relation to each other and to the manner which they have developed through arbitration case law. The context of each legal principle is explored, along with a consideration of some of the major debates and emerging criticisms. Avoiding extensive case extracts, this book adopts an engaging and succinct narrative style which allows readers to advance their understanding of the topic while examining the legal principles with academic rigour and discerning commentary.

The knowledge economy, a seeming wonder for the world, has caused unintended harms that threaten peace and prosperity and undo international cooperation and the international rule of law. The world faces threats of war, pandemics, growing domestic political discord, climate change, disruption of international trade and investment, immigration, and the pollution of cyberspace, just as international law increasingly falls short as a tool for managing these challenges. Prosperity dependent on meritocracy, open borders, international economic freedom, and a wide-open Internet has met its limits, with international law one of the first casualties. Any effective response to these threats must reflect the pathway by which these perils arrive. Part of the answer to these challenges, Paul B. Stephan argues, must include a re-conception of international law as arising out of pragmatic and limited experiments by states, rather than as grand projects to remake and redeem the world.

Two of the most important developments of this new century are the emergence of cloud computing and big data. However, the uncertainties surrounding the failure of cloud service providers to clearly assert ownership rights over data and databases during cloud computing transactions and big data services have been perceived as imposing legal risks and transaction costs. This lack of clear ownership rights is also seen as slowing down the capacity of the Internet market to thrive. Click-through agreements drafted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis govern the current state of the art, and they do not allow much room for negotiation. The novel contribution of this book proffers a new contractual model advocating the extension of the negotiation capabilities of cloud customers, thus enabling an automated and machine-readable framework, orchestrated by a cloud broker. Cloud computing and big data are constantly evolving and transforming into new paradigms where cloud brokers are predicted to play a vital role as innovation intermediaries adding extra value to the entire life cycle. This evolution will alleviate the legal uncertainties in society by means of embedding legal requirements in the user interface and related computer systems or its code. This book situates the theories of law and economics and behavioral law and economics in the context of cloud computing and takes database rights and ownership rights of data as prime examples to represent the problem of collecting, outsourcing, and sharing data and databases on a global scale. It does this by highlighting the legal constraints concerning ownership rights of data and databases and proposes finding a solution outside the boundaries and limitations of the law. By allowing cloud brokers to establish themselves in the market as entities coordinating and actively engaging in the negotiation of service-level agreements (SLAs), individual customers as well as small and medium-sized enterprises could efficiently and effortlessly choose a cloud provider that best suits their needs. This approach, which the author calls "plan-like architectures," endeavors to create a more trustworthy cloud computing environment and to yield radical new results for the development of the cloud computing and big data markets.

This insightful and accessible introduction provides students and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the increasingly important discipline of international investment law. Focusing primarily on the legal principles contained in the growing body of international investment agreements, this book covers the core concepts of the discipline, with attention given to their relation to each other and to the manner which they have developed through arbitration case law. The context of each legal principle is explored, along with a consideration of some of the major debates and emerging criticisms. Avoiding extensive case extracts, this book adopts an engaging and succinct narrative style which allows readers to advance their understanding of the topic while examining the legal principles with academic rigour and discerning commentary.

Coherence is highly valued in law. It is especially sought after in investor-state dispute settlement, where charges of incoherence in arbitral awards have long been raised by states and scholars. Yet coherence is a largely underexplored notion in international law. Often, it is treated as a mere ideal to strive towards or simply as a different way to describe the legal consistency of judicial outcomes. This book takes a different approach. It sees coherence as an independent concept having two dimensions: a substantive and a methodological one. Both are critically important for legal reasoning by international courts and tribunals, including by investor-state tribunals, and the book illustrates through several case studies some of the ways this conclusion is borne out in practice. A fuller understanding of coherence in international law has implications for our understanding of the concept of law, the practice of legal reasoning, and judicial professional ethics.

International Trade Law offers a clear overview of the complexities of an international sale transaction through informed analysis of case law, legislation, and international conventions and rules. Fully updated with changes to the law and new directions in legal debate, this new edition considers: Standard trade terms including INCOTERMS 2010, the Convention on International Sales of Goods 1980 and the UNIDROIT Principles for International Commercial Contracts E-Commerce issues, including electronic bills of lading Insurance and payment mechanisms, such as letters of credit and the UCP 600 International transportation of cargo, including the Rotterdam Rules Dispute resolution (including jurisdiction, applicable law, arbitration and mediation), with particular reference to the relevant EU regulations and the developing case-law thereon Corruption and anti-corruption conventions, including the UK Bribery Act 2010 and developments relating to deferred prosecution agreements In addition to clarifying a range of topics through tables and diagrams, the book directs readers to relevant further reading and online resources throughout, offering students an accessible resource to this often challenging area of the law.

Amid the ongoing crisis surrounding the WTO, China's role and behaviour in the multilateral trading system has attracted overwhelming attention. This timely monograph provides the first comprehensive and systemic analysis of China's compliance with the rulings of the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism (DSM). It covers all the disputes in which China has been a respondent during its 17-year WTO membership and offers a detailed discussion of China's implementation of adverse WTO rulings, its approaches to settling WTO disputes, the possible explanations for such approaches, and post-compliance issues. The book shows how China has utilised the limitations and flexibilities of WTO rulings to ensure that its implementation of the rulings not only delivers adequate compliance but also maintains its own interests. Overall, this book argues that the issues relating to the quality of China's compliance and post-compliance practices concern the loopholes within the DSM itself which may be utilised by all WTO Members. However, despite the loopholes, China's record of compliance suggests that the DSM has been largely effective in inducing compliance and influencing domestic policy-making. It is therefore in the interest of all WTO Members and other stakeholders to protect the DSM as the 'crown jewel' of the multilateral trading system.

The Domestic Politics of International Trade considers the issues surrounding intellectual property rights in international trade negotiations in order to examine the challenges posed to domestic policy-makers by the increasingly broad nature of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Throughout the book the author demonstrates the importance of domestic politics in understanding the nature and outcome of international negotiations, particularly as they relate to international economic diplomacy. The book looks in detail at the intellectual property negotiations which formed part of the US-Peru and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements and analyses the extent to which public health authorities and other parties affected by the increased levels of intellectual property protection were integrated into the negotiation process. The book then juxtaposes these findings with an analysis of the domestic origins of US negotiation objectives in the field of intellectual property, paying particular attention to the role of the private sector in the development of these objectives. Based on a substantial amount of empirical research, including approximately 100 interviews with negotiators, capital based policy-makers, private sector representatives, and civil society organisations in Lima, Bogota and Washington, DC, this book offers a rare account of different stakeholders' perceptions of the FTA negotiation process. Ultimately, the book succeeds in integrating the study of domestic politics with that of international negotiations. This book will be of particular interest to academics as well as practitioners and students in the fields of international law, economic law, intellectual property, political economy, international relations, comparative politics and government.

This book is the first of its kind in focusing on the enforcement of corporate and securities laws, both public and private, which is a relatively understudied but critically important issue for the development and health of global capital markets. The book has a special focus on the young system coming into being in the People's Republic of China (PRC), but also examines the enforcement of corporate and securities laws across the globe and across different legal and political systems from an in-depth comparative perspective. This single volume assembles a veritable 'dream team' of contributors who are amongst the very best scholars and legal specialists in the many national jurisdictions covered in the book. Hence, it is of significant value to corporate and securities regulators, judicial officials, prosecutors, litigation specialists, corporate counsel, legal and economic policymakers, scholars, think tanks, students, and investors alike.

This new edition of International Trade Law Statutes and Conventions presents all the key legislation for International Trade Law in one student-friendly volume. Developed in response to feedback from lecturers and students, this book is: Up-to-date with the law: this book provides a fully current and comprehensive collection of legislation Tailored Content: content has been curated to align with international trade law courses Exam Friendly: conforming to regulations, this is an un-annotated text that is suitable for exam use Easy to Use Format: a clear and attractive text design, detailed table of contents and multiple indices provides ease of reference and navigation With easily accessible coverage of course-relevant material, International Trade Law Statutes and Conventions is ideal for course and exam use, as well as for reference. This book is a perfect companion resource to student learning and exam success.