Today's trade agreements include “trade-plus” provisions such as intellectual property, labor, and environment commitments and subject them to the same dispute settlement mechanisms as the traditional commercial provisions. This Article queries whether the institutional design in which such...

The present generation of free trade agreements (FTAs) suffers from a lack of innovation. This path dependence, which finds its foundation in repetitive language in U.S. agreements and the proliferation of those agreements, has two primary effects. First, it is prompting normative convergence in...