In association with the International Commission of Jurists

June 2012

30 Jun

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin Jon Heller continued coverage of the Melinda Taylor situation in Libya, pointing out a special report in the Guardian detailing her detention and that so far, the "non-apology apology" issued by the ICC has not helped the situation. In other ICC-related news, he pointed out John Bellinger's editorial on the Court at 10 years old. Kevin additionally...

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29 Jun

Dear all, If you haven't had a chance yet to complete our Readers' Survey, there is still time to do so! We  want to know what our readers think about how we're doing and where we can improve. You can access the survey through this link or through the button on the right side bar of the blog. The survey shouldn't take...

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29 Jun

One of my favorite playlists on my iPod is a collection of anti-war songs from the Vietnam era.  Even though I was alive for only some of it, the mid-60s/early 70s produced my favorite music -- much to the delight of my father, who was a hippie at the time and doesn't understand why I relate so deeply to the...

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29 Jun

Differences of interpretation are plaguing Kofi Annan's proposed transition plan for Syria on the eve of Saturday's conference in Geneva. Following a political outcry, South Korea has delayed the signing of an intelligence sharing pact with Japan. The Washington Post has a Q&A with outgoing World Bank Chief Robert Zoellick. It's impossible to escape news articles on the Affordable Care Act judgment today, but since...

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28 Jun

Robert Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law. Joanna Langille is a 2011 graduate of New York University Law School.] This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. We would like to thank Professors Perisin, Lester, and Feichtner for taking the time to comment on our piece. Their remarks are extremely thoughtful, and in some instances help us to clarify our claims. We have also had the benefit of their own thinking and writing on this case in preparing our article. Finally, we would like to thank YJIL for organizing this Symposium. Response to Professor Perisin: Professor Perisin first suggests that the aim of the EU seal products ban is to protect the fox and mink industries within the EU. This raises the issue of how one ascertains whether the aim (or motive) of a measure is protectionist for purposes of WTO law. It would be helpful to understand better the methodology on the basis of which she claims that this is the likely aim of the measure. For example, is it based on legislative history that we somehow missed? Or were there sizable campaign contributions from the mink and fox fur industries to MEPs? We also note that there is evidence that the EU has imposed significant regulatory control on the way in which animals are treated in the EU's own fox and mink industries. The EU has, in the past, taken legislative action to regulate hunting and trapping, such as the EU’s prohibition on the use of leghold traps. It has also subjected fox and mink farming to the general requirements for the protection of animals kept for farming purposes. The EU has demonstrated that it is willing to regulate the domestic fur industry to minimize animal cruelty. In her second major critique, Professor Perisin argues that determining what constitutes cruelty to animals (in the moral sense) is a scientific issue. This is a ground of deep disagreement between Professor Perisin and ourselves. Our analysis of the normative basis of animal welfare is intended to show that whether a given level or kind of animal suffering crosses the cruelty threshold is ultimately a moral question, one of conscience, of “beliefs that per se cannot be scientifically proven.” Professor Perisin characterizes the concern with the welfare of seals as based on “irrational, emotional attitudes."
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28 Jun

[Tamara Perisin is a member of the faculty of law at the University of Zagreb] This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. The article by Rob Howse and Joanna Langille on the EU Seal Products Regulations goes far beyond a case study on a challenged measure and pending dispute. The article places the WTO challenge in the context of the development of a regulator-friendly world trading scheme sensitive to Members' values, such as animal welfare. At the core of the article lies a pluralist vision of the WTO allowing diversity and a high level of protection of non-protectionist aims. This is a vision to which I also personally subscribe. However, beyond the underlying premises of the article, which I fully support, there are subtleties in the analysis of the particular EU measures which lead me to some different conclusions from those Howse and Langille reach. These conclusions, though, are not intended to endorse seal hunting. In this online symposium, I would like to open up several questions for discussion. As a preliminary point, I have to admit that my views of the EU Seal Products Regulation and its Implementing Regulation are influenced by the legality and legitimacy problems which these measures face internally, within the EU. Both Regulations are currently under challenge before the ECJ as they might be contrary to the principles of conferred competences, subsidiarity and proportionality. The Seal Products Regulation was adopted on the basis of Article 114 TFEU which is supposed to serve for the establishment and functioning of the internal market. The EU legislature interpreted this legal basis very broadly to regulate a matter which is not very connected to the internal market, but (arguably) achieves animal health or moral aims for which the EU does not have the competence. Broad interpretations of this competence leave little room for any diversity, pluralism, and decision-making at levels closer to citizens (which are among the EU's basic principles). So an entirely pluralist view actually goes against EU regulations in this area, as EU Member States themselves would have chosen different regulatory solutions for seal protection had they been left with that choice. As regards the measures' compliance with WTO law, this comment relies on the detailed analysis in Permitting Pluralism, and just focuses attention on the aims, coherence and necessity of the measures.
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28 Jun

[Isabel Feichtner is a professor of law and economics at Goethe Universität Frankfurt] This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Robert Howse’s and Joanna Langille’s article on the Seal Products Dispute is a truly admirable piece of normative doctrinal scholarship. The authors do not hide their preferences with respect to animal welfare and the protection of seals in particular. Their propositions as to the interpretation of WTO law are, however, not merely guided by this specific policy preference. Instead their argumentation is supported by a larger vision of global governance and the proper balance between international trade law and domestic regulatory autonomy, all the while thoroughly grounded in the WTO’s own case law. Having been consistently inspired and convinced by the writings of Rob Howse on the WTO I am not the one to argue with the authors’ reconstruction of the trade regime that emphasizes the need for deference to domestic regulatory choices and that wishes (where possible) to limit the disciplines of trade law to prohibitions of discrimination. Thus, I will not offer a fundamental critique. Instead I will take up what intrigues me most in their article -- the notion of “non instrumental public morals justification” – and raise two questions: first whether the seals dispute is a suitable test case for such a justification given that the EU itself had to justify the trade restrictions in instrumental terms; and second whether public morals justifications -- even though non-instrumental -- should be submitted to some form of rationality test. The (Non-)Instrumentality of the EU Seal Products Ban For Regulation 1007/2009 to conform to EU law the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament had to argue that the seal products ban contained in this regulation was necessary for the functioning of the internal market. Since the EU treaties do not grant to the EU a competence to adopt a trade ban for the sole purpose of animal welfare protection, Council and Parliament based the ban on Art. 95 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (now Art. 114 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). For the same reason the trade ban on cat and dog fur in Regulation 1523/2007 was also based on Art. 95 TEC. This legal basis allows for “the approximation of the provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States which have as their object the establishment and functioning of the internal market.” As a consequence of this choice of legal basis the seals ban had to be justified in terms of its instrumentality for the functioning of the internal market. A convincing case had to be made that the (almost complete) ban on trade in seal products within the EU pursued the objective of the functioning of the internal market. As Howse and Langille have convincingly argued a measure may pursue multiple purposes. Indeed Art. 114 TFEU itself mandates the EU to pursue in its harmonization legislation a high level of health, safety, environmental and consumer protection. Whether the EU is competent, however, to pursue such aims in a non-instrumental fashion is open to debate. Taking a similar posture to the EU as Howse and Langille do vis-à-vis the WTO one may be inclined to argue that respect for member state diversity and value pluralism within the EU mandates a restrictive stance of the EU with respect to expressive legislation, signifying moral opprobrium.
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28 Jun

[Simon Lester is the President of WorldTradeLaw.net and a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute.] This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Over the past two decades, there has been an effort by many trade law academics and others to define the boundaries of international trade rules in a way that disciplines trade restrictions, while allowing sufficient policy space for governments to regulate in legitimate ways. Rob Howse has been at the forefront of this effort, having written numerous articles, on a variety of trade law topics, that address various aspects of these issues. In their YJIL article on the WTO Seal Products dispute, Rob and Joanna Langille continued this effort, by trying to address this problem in the context of a specific kind of measure, one that involves what they refer to as "expressions of intrinsic moral or spiritual beliefs". (In the case of the seal products ban at issue, it is "the community's ethical beliefs about the nature of 'cruelty' in the unacceptability of consumption behavior that is complicit with that cruelty.") They argue that WTO law should allow such measures, even if trade is restricted as a result. More generally, they articulate a vision of "pluralism" under the trade regime that "recognizes the importance of expressive, non-instrumental rationales for state decision-making". A specific focus of the piece is the distinction between "instrumental" and "non-instrumental" measures. The authors note that while a traditional means/ends analysis can be used to deal with trade concerns arising from instrumental measures, such as those intended to promote human health, this kind of analysis cannot simply be transposed to non-instrumental regulation, which expresses moral, spiritual or ethical beliefs. The means do not relate to the ends in the same way with such measures. One of their goals, then, is to ensure that non-instrumental regulation does not fall through the cracks of the usual approach to setting appropriate boundaries for the trade regime. If the typical means/ends analysis will not suffice, they say, it must be adjusted to deal with the special situation of non-instrumental regulation. In response to this point, it could be argued that a means/ends analysis is not always ideal even where instrumental measures are at issue. It evaluates the effectiveness of the measure more than its true purpose or trade impact. I don't mean to suggest that such a test is completely irrelevant for evaluating trade restrictions. Rather, I wonder whether other factors are perhaps more important and should be the focus.
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28 Jun

Robert Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law. Joanna Langille is a 2011 graduate of New York University Law School.] This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Our article examines...

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28 Jun

For lack of evidence, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been acquitted of one of two counts of genocide he faces at the ICTY at this mid-point in his trial. He faces 10 other charges, including the other genocide charge affiliated with the Srebrenica massacre, wherein 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed (ICTY press release here). Turkey has sent a...

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