This book presents a comprehensive and systematic study of the principal aspects of the modern law of international commercial transactions. Based on diverse sources, including legislative texts, case law, international conventions, and a variety of soft-law instruments, it highlights key topics such as the international sale of goods, international transport, marine insurance, international finance and payments, electronic commerce, international commercial arbitration, standard trade terms, and international harmonization of trade laws. In focusing on the private law aspects of international trade, the book closely analyzes the relevant statutes, case law and the European Union (EU) and international uniform law instruments like the Rome I Regulation, the UN Convention on the Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), UNCITRAL Model Laws; non-legislative instruments including restatements such as the UNIDROIT Principles on International Commercial Contracts, and rules of business practices codified by the ICC such as the Arbitration Rules, UCP 600 and different versions of the INCOTERMS. The book clearly explains the key concepts and nuances of the subject, offering incisive and vivid analyses of the major issues and developments. It also traces the evolution of the law of international trade and explores the connection between the lex mercatoria and the modern law. Comprehensively examining the issue of international harmonization of trade laws from a variety of perspectives, it provides a detailed account of the work of major players in the field, including UNCITRAL, UNIDROIT, ICC, and the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). Adopting the comparative law method, this book offers a critical analysis of the laws of two key jurisdictions—India and England—in the context of export trade. In order to stimulate discussion on law reform, it explains the similarities and differences not only between laws of the two countries, but also between the laws of India and England on the one hand, and the uniform law instruments on the other. Given its breadth of coverage, this book is a valuable reference resource not only for students in the fields of law, international trade, and commercial law, but also for researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

This book addresses concerns with the international trade and investment dispute settlement systems from a statist perspective, at a time when multilateralism is deeply questioned by the forces of mega-regionalism and political and economic contestation. In covering recent case law and theoretical discussions, the book’s contributors analyze the particularities of statehood and the limitations of the dispute settlement systems to judge sovereign actors as autonomous regulators. From a democratic deficit coupled with a deficit of legitimacy in relation to the questionable professionalism, independence and impartiality of adjudicators to the lack of consistency of decisions challenging essential public policies, trade and investment disputes have proven controversial. These challenges call for a rethinking of why, how and what for, are States judged. Based on a “sovereignty modern” approach, which takes into account the latest evolutions of a globalized trade and investment law struggling to put people’s expectations at its core, the book provides a comprehensive framework and truly original perspective linking the various facets of “judicial activity” to the specific yet encompassing character of international law and the rule of law in international society. In doing so, it covers a large variety of issues such as global judicial capacity building and judicial professionalism from an international and domestic comparative angle, trade liberalisation and States' legitimate rights and expectations to protect societal values, the legal challenges of being a State claimant, the uses and misuses of imported legal concepts and principles in multidisciplinary adjudications and, lastly, the need to reunify international law on a (human) rights based approach.

An examination of the core principles, landmark disputes, and modern developments in IEL reflecting a global approach.

Over the past 10 years, the content and application of international trade law has grown dramatically. The WTO created a binding dispute settlement process and in resolving disputes, the judicial organs of the WTO have built up a substantial amount of new international trade law. Emerging from this new WTO process is an international trade law system that is in some respects self-contained and in other respects overlapping and linked to other international legal, economic and political regimes. The 'boundaries' of trade law are now generating enormous interest and controversy which, at a broader level, is subsumed within the debate over globalization. The detailed development of the rules of international trade is being examined with increasing frequency by scholars, government officials and trade law practitioners. But how does it fit with existing systems? How it is modified by them? How does the international trade law system affect and modify other regimes? This Handbook places international trade law within its broader context, providing comment and critique on contemporary thinking on a range of questions both related specifically to the discipline of international trade law itself and to the outside face of international trade law and its intersection with States and other aspects of the international system. It examines the economic and institutional context of the world trading system, its substantive law (including regional trade regimes) and the settlement of disputes. The final part of the book explores the wider framework of the world trading system, considering issues including the relationship of the WTO to civil society, the use of economic sanctions, state responsibility, and the regulation of multinational corporations.

It is often argued that there is an inherent tension between international human rights law and the rules of free trade. This book explores the assumptions underlying this debate and argues that we need to reconsider them, focusing more on how expert knowledge and informal relationships shape trade law and its interaction with human rights.

This book provides an excellent overview of the legal issues surrounding climate change mitigation and international trade law. It surveys key observed and potential challenges posed by responses to climate change in terms of international trade law. By examining the controversial issues seen in legal cases in which domestic climate change or renewable energy measures conflicted with international trade regimes, this volume promotes and broadens the understanding and debate of the issues. Beyond the recognized challenges, this book uncovers potential areas of conflict between climate change responses and international trade promotion by exploring previous cases and current efforts to prevent climate change. Furthermore, this volume sheds light on the future direction of international trade law and climate change responses, pointing out that the development of climate change or renewable energy laws and policies must also consider international trade regimes in order to ensure the smooth implementation of said laws and policies and guarantee that international trade laws do not restrict environmental policy space.

"This book presents a history and analysis of the GATT legal system as it stands today at the beginning of the 1990s. Although the origins of GATT law go back to the GATT/ITO negotiations of 1946-1948 and beyond, the current legal system is largely the product of a reconstruction that took place from 1970 onwards. The book focuses on the evolution of GATT law during this modern period. It concentrates on the development of GATT's procedure for adjudicating legal disputes between member countries, known in GATT parlance as the "dispute settlement procedure". -- from the Preface, p. vii.

This book explores the changing nature of international law and its ability to respond to the contemporary issues related to international environment, trade and information technology. The evolution of international law has reached a stage where we are witnessing diminishing power of the state and its capacity to deal with the economic matters challenging the existing notions of territory and sovereignty. Recent trends in international law and international relations show that states no longer have exclusive control over the decision-making process at the global level. Keeping this in mind, the book brings together the perspectives of various international and national scholars. The book considers diverse issues such as, sustainable development, climate change, global warming, Rio+20, technology transfer, agro-biodiversity and genetic resource, authority for protection of environment, human right to water, globalization, human rights, sui generis options in IP laws, impact of liberalization on higher education, regulation of international trade, intellectual property rights, collective administration of copyright, broadcast reproduction rights, implementation of copyright law, communication rights under copyright law, arbitration for IP disputes, doctrine of exhaustion of rights, trans-border reputation of trademark, information as an asset, cyber obscenity and pornography, e-governance, taxation of e-commerce, computer crime, information technology, domain names, research excellence in legal education, ideological perspective on legal education, challenges for law teachers, and clinical legal education. The topics, though diverse, are closely interrelated, with the common concern throughout being that the global environment, international trade, information technology and legal education need appropriate national normative and institutional responses as well as the global cooperation of members of the international community. Presenting reflections of a number of Asian, African and European scholars on these varied facets, the book is of great value to scholars, practitioners, teachers and students associated with contemporary international law.

Michael Fakhri uses the transnational history of sugar to tell the multilateral institutional history of trade law.