International trade flows based on information. Is the foreign market open? What are the conditions for entry? Are there customs duties to be paid and other regulations that need to be satisfied? Businesses thrive on getting as much certainty as they can find, and this requires reliable...

In this paper we aim to explain World Trade Organization (WTO) members’ decision to initiate a dispute at the WTO. Since many potential violations of WTO law remain unchallenged, we explore the conditions under which WTO members complain about only some allegedly WTO-incompatible policies,...

In this article, I respond to Twining's lecture, ‘Globalisation and Legal Scholarship'. Through an overview of the effect these changes had on the WTO I will describe how a lawyer or scholar of an ‘established transnational field' experienced the phenomenon of globalisation. In the WTO, the...

For decades, China has maintained state import monopoly in cultural products. The opaque state-trading operations ensure a maximum level of flexibility and efficacy in the government censorship of imports. The WTO judiciary held in the China-Publications case that this practice is inconsistent...

We discuss the role of the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the context of a complex characterization of globalization. The dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is at present a controversial exercise at the...

Artificial photosynthesis (AP) is an area of well-advanced research involving large international groups at the cutting edge of synthetic biology and nanotechnology. In simple terms it offers to produce a cheap source of hydrogen for fuel through using sunlight to split water, as well as making...

This article discusses the place of both the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and their role in global energy governance in the light of the fragmentation debate roughly twenty years after their establishment. The Energy Charter Secretariat (ECS), the...

In 1997, the Lima Declaration against Corruption made the first institutional cry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to address the issue of corruption in international trade. In fact, international trade bears critical vulnerabilities to corruption, particularly concerning Customs...