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International Trade Law - LAWS2084
Overview
Units of Credit: 8
Description
The focus of this course is on the legal structure that affects globalization. For our purposes we can think of globalization as the process by which national economies become interdependent and interlinked. This course introduces students to the legal, business and policy aspects of international trade, focusing on the complex legal framework of the various WTO Agreements. This course analyses the legal framework of the WTO by studying the regulatory legal principles of the WTO and how they operate at both the national and international level. More specifically, the course covers issues such as tariffs and tariff negotiations, quotas, most favoured nation clauses, regional trading blocs, national treatment clauses and exceptions for environmental, health and safety and other policies, anti-dumping, export subsidies, countervailing duties, international rules on patents and copyrights and other topics of contemporary importance currently being debated. The course should give participants a sound understanding of key legal issues and principles relating to international trade and a thorough knowledge and understanding of the importance of domestic and international policy issues to the world trading system.
Objectives
This course will assist student in:
- Developing their knowledge and understanding of the core principles of international trade law applicable to the regulation of international trade in goods, services, intellectual property and investment
- Learning to interpret WTO and FTA legal texts
- Becoming knowledgeable about the WTO and FTA dispute settlement systems and dispute settlement decisions
- Evaluating the complex intersections between the regulation of international trade and domestic regulatory authority
- Recognising and appreciating the intersection between law, economics, politics and public policy that inevitably occur in any international trade negotiation or agreement
Main Topics
- History and structure of the WTO
- Dispute Settlement procedures
- General principles of the WTO
- Trade in goods, trade in services, trade and intellectual property and trade and agriculture
- Free trade agreements
- Contemporary issues (such as trade and the environment, labour, etc)
- The intersection between trade law and policy
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