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Introduction to the Virginia Journal of International Law/Opinio Juris Online Symposium

The Virginia Journal of International Law (VJIL) is delighted to be partnering with Opinio Juris this week to host a series of discussions on recent scholarship published by VJIL. This week will feature articles from the first two Issues of Volume 52 of the Journal. The complete Issue 52:1 can be downloaded here. Issue 52:2 can be found here. On Monday, we begin our discussion an Article by I. Glenn Cohen (Harvard Law School) – “Medical Tourism, Access to Health Care, and Global Justice.” Cohen comprehensively examines the question of whether medical tourism reduces access to health care for the destination country’s poor and whether such deprivations trigger international legal obligations. Excellent commentary will be provided by Nathan Cortez (SMU Dedman School of Law), Colleen M. Flood and Y.Y. Brandon Chen (University of Toronto Faculty of Law), and Jeremy Snyder and Valorie A. Crooks (Simon Fraser University). On Tuesday, we continue with Stephan W. Schill’s (Max Planck Institute) Article, “Enhancing International Investment Law’s Legitimacy: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations of a New Public Law Approach.” Schill responds to the challenges international investment law poses for domestic public law values by suggesting that international investment law and investment treaty arbitration should be conceptualized as public law disciplines. He argues that investment treaties should be interpreted, investor-state disputes resolved, and system-internal reform proposed by recourse to public law thinking. Anthea Roberts (Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Lecturer in Law, Department of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science) and Jürgen Kurtz (Associate Professor, Melbourne Law School) will respond. On Wednesday, Gregory Shaffer (University of Minnesota School of Law) and Joel Trachtman (Fletcher School – Tufts University) will discuss their Article, “Interpretation and Institutional Choice at the WTO.” Shaffer and Trachtman develop a framework of comparative institutional analysis for assessing the implications of judicial interpretation at the World Trade Organization. Although the framework they develop focuses on the WTO, it also has relevance for understanding the interpretation of international and domestic legal texts from “law and economics” and “law and society” perspectives. Responding to their piece will be Rachel Brewster (Harvard Law School), Robert Howse (New York University School of Law), and Joost Pauwelyn (The Graduate Institute, Geneva).