PDF: A New Era at the CIT
By: Timothy Meyer
Judicial conferences offer a unique opportunity for the bench and bar to gather and discuss issues that matter to all of a court’s stakeholders. That gathering has rarely been more important as courts seek to reestablish a sense of normalcy after COVID-19. The 21st
Judicial Conference of the Court of International Trade (CIT or “the Court”), held in October 2022, was thus propitiously timed to allow the members of the Court to interact with members of the bar in a conference setting for the first time since before the pandemic. More
than simply a post-Covid exercise, though, the conference also allowed the bench and bar to take stock of the dramatic changes in international trade law and policy that have occurred in the last several years and that seem increasingly entrenched. The increased use of executive power to regulate trade and impose duties, potential changes to administrative law doctrines that are foundational to practicing before the Court, and an expanding effort to impose and collect duties on imports for a range of policy goals.
This essay serves as an introduction to the articles published from that conference, as well as a general description of the conference itself. The articles deal with a range of topics of importance to the CIT and the attorneys practicing before it, including administrative law practice at the CIT, rules of origin, the potential use of duties to counteract climate change, and relatively new rules designed to catch the evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties. The essay proceeds in three parts. Part II briefly describes the CIT itself, a unique
federal court. Part III describes the Judicial Conference’s main themes, while Part IV introduces the articles that fill the remainder of this issue.