to secure agreements with regard to ‘technical conditions’ of trade, such as purity, quality, and ‘sanitary condition’ and.to ensure that the issuance of licenses ‘should be carried out with the least possible delay’.to ‘publish promptly all regulations relating to Customs’ in such a manner ‘as to enable persons concerned to become acquainted with them’.to provide ‘equitable treatment’ in customs and similar regulations.In pursuit of that goal, the League launched negotiations for the Convention for the Simplification of Customs Formalities with its stated aim that ‘commercial relations shall not be hindered by excessive, unnecessary or arbitrary Customs or other similar formalities.’ In this Convention of 1923, Governments agreed: The visions of Sillac and Hull were in part achieved by the Treaty of Versailles which established a League of Nations and called for future conventions to ‘secure and maintain … equitable treatment for all commerce’ of League members. ‘which in their effects are calculated to create destructive commercial controversies or bitter economic wars, and to formulate agreements with respect thereto, designed to eliminate and avoid the injurious results and dangerous possibilities of economic warfare, and to promote fair and friendly trade relations among all the nations of the world.’ In 1916, US Congressman Cordell Hull proposed a ‘permanent international trade congress’ to consider national practices: In 1911, the French diplomat Max Jarousse de Sillac advocated ‘an organization legislative, judicial and administrative in character.’ The purpose of the ‘legislative international organization’ would be to promote the ‘security of states’ and ‘the welfare of nations.’ The judicial character would entail a ‘court of international justice’ with four chambers including a chamber for customs questions. The early 20 th century raised the ambition for a rule-based international legal system. The year 1890 also brought the first international organisation for trade, the International Union for the Publication of Customs Tariffs. Some key legal stepping stones during the 19 th century include the Zollverein and its treaties starting in 1834, the sugar bounty convention in 1864, and the resolutions on customs and reciprocity of the First Pan-American Conference in 1890. Section 4 presents a plan for strengthening the WTO.Īlthough the term IEcL originated in the 20 th century, the quest for a rule of law in global trade goes back to the 19 th century, if not earlier. Section 3 looks at the pushback against trade and against international law.
Section 2 provides an assessment of the performance of the WTO and its leading members, particularly with regard to the US–China trade war. The essay has four parts: section 1 summarises the origin of and legalisation in the multilateral trading system. This essay examines the stresses on the WTO in the broader context of the trends in IEcL and US economic policy. So, there is little reason to doubt that a world trading system will be a crucial part of the future of IEcL. Bringing order to international trade was always part of the past of international economic law (IEcL). To the Question of whether there is a ‘meaningful place’ for the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the ‘Future of International Economic Law’, the answer is an unabashed yes. Had that question been asked, one can imagine the cerebral Lord Brittan paraphrasing Franklin’s optimistic, yet hedged, answer and replying: ‘A World Trade Organization if you can keep it.’ Whereupon Franklin replied, ‘A republic if you can keep it.’ In 1994, when the drafting of the WTO was completed in Marrakesh, I am not aware that anyone in the crowd waiting outside asked European Trade Minister Leon Brittan what form of international trade governance had been created.
A lady awaiting outside the State House approached Franklin to ask whether the convention had created a republic or a monarchy.
In September 1787, the inventor and free trader Benjamin Franklin emerged from the convention in Philadelphia that had just completed drafting the United States (US) Constitution.
The place of the WTO in international economic law