The Politics of International Economic Law

Description

How do politics and international economic law interact with each other? Financial crises and shifts in global economic patterns have refocused our attention on how the fingerprints of the 'visible hand' can be seen all over the institutions that underpin the rules of globalization. From trade and investment to finance, governments are under pressure to enforce, resist and rewrite international economic law. Lawyers have seldom given enough attention to the influence of politics on law, whereas political scientists have had an on-again, off-again fascination with how the law influences relations among states. This book leads the way toward filling this interdisciplinary gap, through a series of important studies written by leaders in the field on specific problems in international economic relations. The book demonstrates a variety of ways in which the international political-economic nexus may be researched and understood.

Tomer Broude is a Senior Lecturer with the Faculty of Law and Department of International Relations and Academic Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is an expert in international economic law, particularly WTO and regional trade law, dispute settlement, investment and development. He is the author of the book International Governance in the WTO: Judicial Boundaries and Political Capitulation (2004) and has co-edited several other books, including The Shifting Allocation of Authority in International Law: Considering Sovereignty, Supremacy and Subsidiary (2008, edited with Yuval Shany); Multisourced Equivalent Norms in International Law (2010, edited with Yuval Shany); and Law and Development Perspective on International Trade Law (2011, edited with Won-Mog Choi, Gary Horlick and Y. S. Lee). Marc L. Busch is the Karl F. Landegger Professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC and an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is an expert on international trade policy and law and the author of the book Trade Warriors, and articles in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Journal of Sociology, the British Journal of Political Science, the Fordham International Law Journal, International Organization, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of World Trade, World Politics and World Trade Review. Amelia Porges advises companies, governments and trade associations on how to use WTO law, trade agreements and investment rules to solve complex market access problems. She represents governments and stakeholders in negotiations and litigation in the WTO and free trade agreements, and advises governments on WTO and trade agreement institutions and compliance. Her experience includes guiding US WTO litigation during the first five years of the WTO, at the Office of the US Trade Representative; legal drafting, advice and dispute settlement work in the GATT Secretariat during the Uruguay Round; and advising on tariff and services negotiations, including the original and updated Information Technology Agreement and the GATS. Her recent work focuses on free trade agreement dispute settlement, trade in digital products and services, renewable energy, tariff negotiations, trade disciplines on state-owned enterprises, agricultural subsidies, procurement trade, technical barriers to trade, TPP and TTIP, and she has worked with a wide range of industrial and agricultural sectors. She teaches international trade law at The Johns Hopkins University and has published widely on trade law subjects.

'In addition to its direct relevance to events today, the book also has a timeless quality as it considers the role of politics across much of the very large International Economic Law field. The volume, however, is well organized to bring order out of that potential chaos. Tomer Broude, Amy Porges, and Marc Busch have done an excellent job dividing the world of politics and international economic law into five discrete and meaningful sections, analyzing the role of politics in the areas of trade, investment, finance, dispute settlement, and foreign policy.' World Trade Review