There are countries that do not fall under the prevailing definitions of developed and developing country that are employed by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO fails to take into account the special circumstances and needs of these countries. While such special circumstances and needs...

Trade and investment can be effective means of implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. However, stand-alone trade and investment liberalization policies aimed at enhancing economic development may have negative side-effects on non-economic facets of sustainable development. As...

National debates over policies that affect the flow of digital information are heating up as censorship, surveillance, control over personal data, and requirements to store data locally have emerged as contentious political issues. In the coming years, governments will need to carefully craft...

The interface of trade and climate change mitigation and adaptation is at the heart of contemporary legal developments in energy law. Yet, the challenges of climate change are merely the tip of the iceberg of unresolved and controversial issues relating to the status of energy in international...

One of the risks that international economic law is facing is the inability to give consistent answers to actual needs. Coherence, consistency and predictability of international law rules are particularly relevant in a global world and market, where private actors are increasingly gaining...

The future is drying out. By 2025, up to 40% of the world's population could be suffering of water scarcity, and yet, the role of law in the governance of water resources seems to be mostly spared of critical scrutiny. At the heart of the matter is our conception of water. Traditionally, water...

The WTO Agreement is said to be unconcerned with trade effects. Instead, WTO member countries incur state responsibility on the basis of their acts alone. This responsibility is reinforced by the irrebuttable presumption contained in DSU Art. 3.8 and longstanding practice, which together...

Although a court, as a judicial organ, usually fulfils its mission by resolving specific disputes brought to it, it occasionally goes beyond this simple dispute-resolving function and more actively engages in building policies which define, and "constitute," the very polity to which the court...

This paper considers the compatibility of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Commission (EC) and African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) countries with the law of the World Trade Organisation. The Eastern and Southern African EPAs are used as a case study. Three possibilities...

Brazil is currently immersed in the project of building a new common market, known as MERCOSUR, with its neighbors Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It has largely been assumed that this project will produce economic growth and therefore be beneficial for the environment. However, this assumption...