Publication Date
12-2000
Journal
Harvard Law Review
Abstract
Conventional wisdom holds that the World Trade Organization (WTO) necessarily poses a threat to sovereignty and representative government within its member nations. Professors McGinnis and Movsesian refute this view. They argue that the WTO can be understood as a constitutive structure that, by reducing the power of protectionist interest groups, can simultaneously promote international trade and domestic democracy. Indeed, in promoting both free trade and accountable government, the WTO reflects many of the insights that inform our own Madisonian Constitution. Professors McGinnis and Movsesian reject recent proposals to grant the WTO regulatory authority, endorsing instead the WTO's limited adjudicative power as the better means to resolve the difficult problem of covert protectionism. They develop a series of procedureoriented tests that would permit WTO tribunals to invalidate covert protectionism without supplanting national judgments on labor, environmental, health, and safety policies. Finally, they demonstrate that the WTO's emerging approach to the problem of covert protectionism largely comports with the democracy-reinforcing jurisprudence they recommend, and they offer some suggestions for reforms that would help prevent the organization from going astray in the future.
Volume
114
Issue
2
First Page
511
Last Page
605
Publisher
The Harvard Law Review Association
Keywords
Business and the Law, International Trade and the Law, Constitutional Law, Executive Branch, Foreign Affairs, International Law
Disciplines
Constitutional Law | International Law | International Trade Law | Law | President/Executive Department
Recommended Citation
John O. McGinnis & Mark L. Movsesian,
The World Trade Constitution,
114
Harv. L. Rev.
511
(2000).
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/faculty-articles/986
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, International Law Commons, International Trade Law Commons, President/Executive Department Commons
