The de facto moratorium and product-specific measures at issue in the EC - Biotech case involved what amounted to an EC decision to impose a substantive marketing ban on all biotech products. Yet they were treated as involving only a procedural delay under Annex C(1)(A) of the SPS Agreement. The...

The WTO system is increasingly finding itself undermined by intractable disputes that involve high levels of public concern about the safety of proposed imports, in particular as seen in the EC-Hormones and the EC Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products cases. This indicates a systemic...

The WTO Appellate Body has noted that the precautionary principle will be relevant to the interpretation of the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures in various ways, although the Appellate Body has declined to determine the status of the precautionary principle at international...

Ambition for employing public international legal authority as a means for the protection of human health and the environment appears to be diminishing in our transnationalist economic era. Practical and political challenges in defining the complex relationships between States and...

Plain language summary: Investment tribunals’ work has provoked public concern, often relating to how international investment law intrudes into States’ domestic regulatory space. How far should investment law discipline States’ regulatory and administrative activity? Many consider it...

The idea of investment treaty arbitration as public law is in tension with the concept of international law as a law between representative public agencies. This concept of international law is valuable for its capacity to progress a broad range of public policy aims in an integrated and...

How can the world do better at responding to potential pandemics at an early stage? Intense consideration is being given to this question as part of formal reviews on the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the functioning of the World Health Organization’s International Health...