By: Aaron Simowitz PDF: Contracting Around Treaties International commercial treaties are normally categorized as default or mandatory, rules that private parties can contract around or cannot. This dichotomous categorization misses an important element of treaty design and interpretation. The same considerations that determine whether a treaty is default or mandatory—transaction and error costs, paternalism, and externalities—should also determine how easy or difficult it i

By: Rosa Celorio PDF: Tides and Crossroads This Article focuses on the recent era of jurisprudence issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on women’s rights and gender equality issues. It discusses the recent tide of the court towards matters concerning women and gender equality, which has led to critical transformations in the carving of regional human rights legal standards. The court has capably transitioned from a civil and political rights tribunal to one tha

By: Katayoon Beshkardana PDF: Killing the WTO The World Trade Organization (WTO) is beyond repair and cannot be reformed. When born, the WTO was seen as a unique organization unencumbered by the shortcomings of its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The WTO Appellate Body was seen as a jewel on the crown of the rule- based multilateral trading system, an establishment that objectively resolved trade disputes among nations and enforced its decisions again

By: Ali Hakim & Matei Alexianu PDF: Non-State Sanctions Amid the catastrophic wars in Gaza and Ukraine, private organizations have arranged boycotts, bans, and other nonviolent measures to pressure Israel and Russia to comply with international law. These are just the latest examples of a long tradition of international law enforcement by non-state actors. But despite this rich history, international law doctrine and discourse understand sanctions exclusively as tools of sta