IIEL Research Projects

The Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL) emphasizes research into fundamental systemic problems related to International Economic Law, defined broadly to include almost any subject involving law as it relates to cross-border economic activity. IIEL research projects aim to examine some of the more complex current issues facing the WTO, such as the review of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding; the perplexing policy issue of the relation between international economic law and human rights; the challenges posed by China's WTO accession; or the relationship between trade and environment. In the future, the IIEL intends to serve as the umbrella for interdisciplinary research projects, looking into the intriguing and vast relationships between international economic law and competition policy, financial regulations, international taxation problems, etc. These IIEL research projects potentially may influence actual events and provide important critiques of policies, negotiations, or court and tribunal cases.

Oral History Project

Today as never before, the global trading system is a central factor in policy-making at both the domestic and international levels. As the future of this system is debated, its past will become increasingly important as a guide to the underlying policies and principles it embodies. Many senior national and government officials have had first-hand knowledge of this history and were intimately involved throughout many years. Their knowledge and experiences are of enormous value, both to scholars tracing the evolution of international trade regimes and to politicians and diplomats formulating future policy.

The IIEL has launched a multi-disciplinary oral history project to record and document the evolution of the international trade system, with a focus on the post World War II period including GATT and the WTO. The objective of this Oral History Project is to collect oral history from a wide range of senior government officials and secretariat officials who have been intimately involved at the highest level in the world trading system. Most of these persons have participated in the GATT/WTO negotiations throughout the post-World War II period. The goal is to create an archive of primary sources.

This Project is under the umbrella of the Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL) at the Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law), in close cooperation with the John Wolff International and Comparative Law Library of Georgetown Law. The World Trade Institute (WTI) in Bern, Switzerland, directed by Prof. Thomas Cottier, serves as the European partner. An Oral History Steering Group constituted by the IIEL formulates the policies and priorities for the project, with the assistance of the advisory committee described below.

An Advisory Committee, chaired by Ernest Preeg, assists the Co-Directors in shaping the project, in particular by sharing their expertise in oral history or international economic law matters. The Committee members include: Ernest Preeg, Professor Thomas Cottier, Professor I.M. Destler, Professor Daniel R. Ernst, Professor Lawrence O. Gostin, Douglas Ierley, Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Alfred Reifman, and Professor Edith Brown Weiss.

WTO Dispute Settlement Review Project

An ongoing research project is underway to study reforms proposed for the WTO Dispute Settlement (DS) process. This project will involve substantial analytical and statistical work concerning the WTO DS process as well as significant scholarly writing on the subject, in several different forms.  Professor John H. Jackson and Professor William Davey, the Edwin M. Adams Professor of Law at the University of Illinois and the first Director of the WTO Legal Affairs Division (from 1995 to August, 1999), initiated this study with the aid of an advisory committee of professors, practitioners, and government officials. 

In addition, in recent years Professor Jackson, joined by Georgetown Law adjunct Professors Bradley and Parlin, has devoted his seminar on Law and Policy of International Economic Relations to the WTO dispute settlement procedures and how these procedures interact with diplomacy and policy making concerning international economic relations.  The topics of students' research papers have covered a broad range of WTO jurisprudential issues.

Human Rights and International Trade Project

The linkage between international economic law and human rights has been a perplexing policy issue for decades. A project to study the links between trade law and policy on the one hand, and international human rights law on the other hand, has been conducted under the umbrella of the American Society of International Law, with the cooperation of two other institutions, including the Max Planck Institute at Heidelberg, Germany (Prof. Dr. Jochen Frowein) and the World Trade Institute at Bern, Switzerland (Prof. Dr. Thomas Cottier).

World Trade, Development, and International Health

This research is directed by Georgetown Law Professors M. Gregg Bloche and Carlos M. Vázquez.

To what degree does the international law governing the global economy conflict with nation states' efforts to protect and promote people's health? Can international economic law be harmonized with national and global health policies and with the status of health as a human right? Tensions between government health policies and world trading rules have been building for the past decade or more, and international financial institutions are increasingly being urged to take the health impact of development strategies into account. Among the issues in this realm that have recently been subjects of legal and political controversy are international intellectual property protection for pharmaceuticals (particularly in the area of AIDS) and allocation of investment capital to activities with implications for public health. Institute professors have a variety of research interests in these and related subjects. Matters currently receiving their attention include the building of a conceptual foundation for harmonizing international economic law with the idea of health as a human right and the World Trade Organization "Trade Related Intellectual Property" (TRIPs) agreement's approach to manufacture and pricing of life-saving drug treatments.

Trade and the Environment

Many interesting and profoundly important policy issues now engage questions about the environment and sustainable development. Clearly many of these questions transcend national borders, and thus require techniques for international coordination and cooperation. This in turn often implies the need for legal instruments and structures. There are now over 1,000 international legal instruments that are either devoted to environmental issues or have one or more important provision addressing them.

Because of these trends the IIEL is happy to include among its priority research programs attention to several different aspects of international environmental law. This program is directed by Professor Edith Brown Weiss, the Francis Cabell Brown Professor of International Law. Professor Weiss is a well recognized and honored professor of public international law and of environmental law, with a special focus on international environmental law (one of the subjects about which she has created a course in the Georgetown Law curriculum that she teaches). Her own on-going research contributes importantly to the literature and thinking about this subject (see particularly her co-edited major study of compliance by nation states with selected environmental treaties).

In addition there is much policy discussion about the linkage of environmental law and international trade law.  The IIEL is considering different ways to research this topic. In Fall 1999, Professors Jackson, Edith Brown Weiss, and C. Christopher Parlin jointly taught a "Seminar on Environment and Trade Law," which considered the intersection of international environmental law and trade law. This seminar used five key trade cases (one GATT case, three WTO cases, and the anticipated WTO case on genetically modified organisms) as a focus for extensive discussions, which included government officials and practitioners. A book based on the Seminar Papers, entitled Reconciling Environment and Trade (Transnational Publishers, Inc.) has been published (April 2001).

Effects of China's Accession to the WTO

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is considered to be one of the most important challenges facing China and the WTO in recent years. China's accession raised serious legal questions about its capacity to implement the WTO rules and policies effectively. In addition, China's membership undoubtedly will affect some of the key WTO rules and policies, particularly by giving China a voice in future WTO policymaking.

Following the success of a course at Georgetown Law on WTO Law and Policy for Chinese government officials in June 2000, the ground was laid for a comprehensive, long-running study of the process of China's accession to the WTO. The goal of this project is to examine over the next several years some of the fundamental effects of China's membership on China and on the WTO. In particular, the project will aim to give a comprehensive overview of the legal and policy problems faced by China in the light of its accession and, at the same time, the impact of Chinese legal culture and diplomacy on several of the key issues currently dealt with in the WTO (role of civil society; transparency; determination of dispute-settlement cases; etc.). An aim of the Project is to encourage scholarly writings and publications on this subject.

Future IIEL Research Projects

Study is currently proceeding on the possibility of projects relating to subjects such as:

	International Aspects of Competition Policy and Law
	International Taxation Problems
	Institutional reforms needed in the WTO and other international economic institutions
	Questions of international norms governing national administrative procedures
	Intellectual Property Protection: Relationship to Trade Norms