Faculty Bibliography

In the past decade, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has adjudicated over forty disputes involving China and other powerful economies. These cases are often trumpeted as a sign of the enduring strength of the trade regime and the efficacy of international law in managing geopolitical tensions associated with China’s rise. This Article suggests that this positive assessment obfuscates dangers lurking on the horizon. It explains why the rise of China presents a major challenge to the multilateral trade regime. At the heart of this challenge is the fact that China’s economic structure is sui generis — having evolved in a manner largely unforeseen by those negotiating WTO treaty law. As a result, the WTO is equipped to deal effectively with only a limited range of disputes — those in which Chinese policies largely resemble elements of other alternative economic structures. Outside of this set of issues, the WTO faces two very different but equally serious challenges. The first is reinterpreting certain legal concepts to adapt and fit an unforeseen Chinese context. The second is deciding whether to expand the scope of its legal rules to accommodate issues that currently fall outside its jurisdiction. This Article explores options for meeting these challenges. It suggests that the most likely outcome is one in which China’s rise will exacerbate the diminishing centrality of WTO law for global trade governance.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is held out as an exemplar of an effectively functioning international “court.” Yet, a puzzle remains unexplained: in WTO litigation, a respondent found to have enacted an illegal trade policy measure needs only to remedy the illegality. So long as it does, the WTO lacks the authority to order retrospective remedies to be paid to the complainant for past harm. The remedies loophole provides countries with a “free pass” for temporary breach. Why do more countries not take advantage of this pass more frequently? How is it that the WTO manages to function effectively in spite of its imperfect remedies? This Article suggests that the key to understanding the answer to this puzzle lies in the importance of power asymmetries in a WTO system that is dynamic and evolving. It identifies a series of policy instruments available to a powerful country whenever its trading partner is tempted to undertake a temporary breach that harms the powerful state’s interests. These instruments create additional costs that offset the benefit of any temporary breach, thereby effectively deterring most, albeit not all, temporary breaches. In addition, the established powers share a collective interest in maintaining the WTO system’s stability. This also causes them to exercise collective self-restraint in their own exercise of temporary breaches. The answer to this puzzle is of more than just academic importance. It also sheds important light on the future of the international trade regime. As geopolitical power shifts and trade among developing countries increases, particular countries may find it more tempting to engage in temporary breaches under certain circumstances. This Article examines the nature of these emergent conflicts and discusses its implications for the future of the global trading regime.

This paper examines the extent to which the international trade regime impacts the international investment regime. While commentators have identified rich areas of cross-fertilization and suggested increasing convergence between the two regimes, the evidence reveals only a limited and selected degree of influence. Specific attention is paid to four areas: the design and architecture of the investment regime; the patterns of investment treaty formation; the substance of investment treaty provisions; and treaty interpretation. Across these four areas, interactions between the two regimes remain sporadic and decentralized. Given the different normative orientations of the two regimes, one should not expect growing rapprochement in the foreseeable future between the two regimes.

This volume discusses the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the global forum for trade liberalization. It discusses in exhaustive manner the legal framework governing international trade that evolves out of the treaty regime and elaborates upon the major case law issued by the WTO. It further includes references to academic scholarship critiquing the caselaw, as well as discussions of the economic and political science theories of how WTO law is shaped.