Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

This is a part-term course that will meet from Sept. 4-13, and from October 2-4, 2012.

The objective of the course is to provide a comprehensive presentation and analysis of the WTO law. The course is restricted to the trade agreements of WTO, that is, trade in goods and trade in services, and a detailed examination of the dispute settlement system. We start, nevertheless, with a detailed historical account of the GATT genesis. The instructors pay particular attention to the case-law: the WTO being a rare (in international relations) third party compulsory adjudication system, WTO courts have contributed significantly to the evolution of the WTO regime. In every course, following a presentation of the modern status of law and case-law, we ask two questions: to what extent case-law makes sense from an economics perspective? And, if not, to what extent the distortion lies in the interpretation or the legal regime itself? We thus, aim to initiate students to a critical evaluation of the WTO regime (besides a positivistic presentation) as well.