030448 KU Trade litigation (2016S)

In 1999, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace hit the screens to near universal critical opposition. There were three things wrong with the movie: an annoying Jar Jar Binks; an even more annoying Anakin Skywalker; and the villain. For those who wisely avoided this travesty, the "villain" was ... The Trade Federation. The movie spoke to the mass protests then convulsing the world against various global trade deals, foremost among them the Seattle Round, which went down to flames in the same year as the Trade Federation's demise.

This course seeks to demystify international trade law and its principal home, the World Trade Organization. We will begin with the theoretical foundations of liberalised trade as well as its critiques. We will then discuss the legal framework within which trade agreements are negotiated and enter into force. Moving onto the substance, we will discuss the core bargain at the heart of the WTO Agreement and measures put in place to protect both the economic value and the political legitimacy of that bargain. Having grounded ourselves in the basics, we will move on to the impact of liberalised trade rules in general and the WTO Agreement more specifically on social, environmental and health protection; industrial policy, and economic development.

The course will move along a triple axis of economic theory, law and policy; challenge students to think both critically and pragmatically, and seek to transcend "Trade Federation" vilification in favour of a more comprehensive and critical understanding of the current economic and trade world order.