I attended a couple of the Global Teach in workshops last weekend, and
was generally disappointed, save for one entitled "Devolution vs.
Globalization: Issues of State's Soverignty". The three moderators,
Bob Sturmburg (Georgetown Law Prof), Ladd Cahoon(ditto,
student?), and David Morris, (Center for local action???) had some
very interesting insights into the nature of the WTO. Basically, both
David and Bob asserted that the WTO represented the extension of the
legal side of the U.S. Constitution on a global basis (The clause giving
the Feds the right to regulate interstate commerce, in particular).
The difference, they argued, is that while the legal mechanisims are
in place, there is no corresponding creation of a political side, as
there is in the U.S. constitution. Rather, the WTO more closely
resembles the old articles of confederation: -- something David
Morris in particular argued was not all that bad of a thing. Instead of
a political state being created, the WTO relies on a court to adjudicate
disputes, and the self-interest of the members to enforce it. Since
the power of the court is to "legitimate" the injured party to impose
limited trade sanctions, in practice, countries which have a greater
share of their economies dependent on trade tend to have a greater
interest in abiding by the court's decisions, whereas countries with a
lesser makeup of trade in their GDP, can affort to ignore or flout the
court's rulings more often. While I am fairly ignorant of the WTOs
organizational theory, this struck me as a fairly relevant example of
an international organization, based on law, that is able to act
somewhat along the lines of of what Dr. Rozov was thinking of.
The drawbacks of this system are (acc. to Stumberg et.al.) that
because there is no political system in place, there is little
democratic process in the system. Also, the members who make up
the court are composed of corporate-complex people. S pointed out
that there really are no other candidates for consideration, because
accumulating experience in international trade is something that by
and large only corporate people, or lawyers in firms employed by
corporates, do. They made the point in passing that sometimes this
means that the opinions of the court members influences its objective
decisions. This, of course, caused a great deal of consternation on
the part of the audience, who, like most people, tend to assume that
Judges are perfectly objective. To S, though, this was a fairly
minor point, because as a law professor he knows that this is the case
in any legal system, here in the U.S. or elsewhere. While S knew
that in practice there are no objective observers, most of the
audience found this to be a radically new concept. The concerns held
were that, because the WTO is a system whose mission is to promote
Free Trade, many local enviornmental movements would be hindered
in some of the tactics to promote enviornmentalism. Basically, for
things like Mandatory recycled content laws, the WTO makes the
system go from the highest common denomitor to the lowest common
denominor in terms of percentage recycled content.
The upcoming OECD agreement on investment was also something
which I did not take extensive notes on but was a fairly interesting
piece.
I also went to one of the workshops that RIchard Moore was teaching.
He seemed nothing like my mental picture of him (the guy was a large
hispanic/native american with a self-deprecating sense of humor, and
was from my home-town of Albuquerque: not quite what I pictured)
-- then I realized that he was a different Richard. Richard, your
Namesake sends his best wishes.
Comments?
Greg Ehrig