Bulletin n. 2/2016
December 2016
INDICE
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
  • Peter L.H. Van den Bossche
    John H. Jackson and WTO Dispute Settlement
    in Journal of International Economic Law , Volume 19 Issue 2 ,  2016 ,  335-338
    With the passing of John Jackson, the international trade community has lost its most influential academic. Many of us have also lost a mentor and a friend. I was his student and research assistant at Michigan Law School in 1985 and 1986, and during the 30 years that have passed since, John has been—as for so many of his former students—a source of wise advice and crucial support in important moments of my professional life. John shaped international trade law and policy as we know it today not only through his publications and public lectures, but also through countless private meetings with trade policy makers, trade lawyers and fellow academics, many of whom had been his students. These meetings, during which John always asked more probing questions than he offered easy answers or developed grand theories, were colored by his deep commitment to multilateralism and his pragmatism. One such meeting took place in 1996 when the Appellate Body—shortly after it was constituted and before it heard its first appeal—met with John to seek his advice and guidance. John Jackson has always been a staunch defender of a strong WTO dispute settlement system. He considered such a system to be indispensable to making WTO rules effective and ensuring the security and predictability of the multilateral trading system. As he wrote in 1997 in an editorial comment in the American Journal of International Law: ‘Because of the implications of many of the legal obligations in the Uruguay Round texts, and because they were negotiated among more than 120 participating national governments, it is not surprising that one can find ambiguities, omissions and other troublesome interpretative problems in this vast treaty. For this reason, the dispute settlement process becomes crucial, since it is one of the principal means for resolving the inevitable …
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