"Nested and Overlapping Regimes in the Transatlantic Banana Trade Dispute"

The decade long trans-Atlantic banana dispute was not a traditional trade conflict stemming from antagonistic producers’ interests. Instead, this article argues that the banana dispute is one of the most complex illustrations of the legal and political difficulties created by the nesting and overlapping of international institutions and commitments. The contested Europe-wide banana policy was an artifact of nesting--the fruit of efforts to reconcile the single market with Lomé obligations which then ran afoul of WTO rules. Using counter-factual analysis, this article explores how the nesting of international commitments contributed to creating the dispute, provided forum shopping opportunities which themselves complicated the options of decisionmakers, and hindered resolution of what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward trade dispute. We then draw out implications from this case for the EU, an institution increasingly nested within multilateral mechanisms, and for the issue of the nesting of international institutions in general

The Andean Tribunal of Justice and Its Interlocutors: Understanding Preliminary Reference Patterns in the Andean Community

In the European Union, national courts have been key intermediaries in helping to bolster and expand the authority of the European Court of Justice through its preliminary reference mechanism. This article analyzes the role of national judges in the Andean Community, a regional legal system whose judicial institution - the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) - was modeled directly on its European predecessor. Our analysis is based on an original coding of every publically available national court referral to the ATJ from 1987 to 2007 and interviews with over forty participants in the Andean legal system. We find that the relationship between the ATJ and national judges differs significantly from the relationship between the ECJ and its domestic judicial colleagues. As in Europe, references from national judges account for the vast majority of cases on the ATJ\u27s docket. But unlike in Europe, national courts are mostly passive intermediaries. Our coding reveals that national judges do not pose provocative questions to the ATJ, and that there is significant cross-national variation in referral patterns. Interviews corroborate what the data suggests: national judges have a circumscribed understanding of what Andean law requires of them. More than 90% of references involve technical issues of Andean intellectual property (IP) law and the registration decisions of domestic IP administrative agencies. National judges have embraced the ATJ\u27s active role in IP disputes because of the support of these agencies, which seek the Tribunal\u27s guidance to interpret vague areas of Andean law. Outside the area of IP, national judges are far more reluctant, contributing to the limited penetration of Andean law into national legal orders. We conclude by comparing the role of national judges in Europe to their role in the Andean context, extracting broader insights about the role of national judges in building international rules of law

The Influence of the Andean Intellectual Property Regime on Access to Medicines in Latin America

This chapter is a contribution to Balancing Wealth and Health: Global Administrative Law and the Battle over Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in Latin America, Rochelle Dreyfuss & César Rodríguez-Garavito, eds. Part I of the chapter explains how the repeated interactions between the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) and domestic IP agencies in the Andean Community helped to build an effective IP rule of law and to solidify pro-consumer interpretations of regional patent and trademark rules. Part II documents how ATJ judges and agency officials enabled Andean governments to resist pressure from the United States and its pharmaceutical industry to circumvent the flexibilities in regional IP rules. Part III considers the broader implications of the Andean experience for access to medicines in Latin America, drawing on examples from the national case studies in this volume

The three-dimensional Multi-Block Advanced Grid Generation System (3DMAGGS)

As the size and complexity of three dimensional volume grids increases, there is a growing need for fast and efficient 3D volumetric elliptic grid solvers. Present day solvers are limited by computational speed and do not have all the capabilities such as interior volume grid clustering control, viscous grid clustering at the wall of a configuration, truncation error limiters, and convergence optimization residing in one code. A new volume grid generator, 3DMAGGS (Three-Dimensional Multi-Block Advanced Grid Generation System), which is based on the 3DGRAPE code, has evolved to meet these needs. This is a manual for the usage of 3DMAGGS and contains five sections, including the motivations and usage, a GRIDGEN interface, a grid quality analysis tool, a sample case for verifying correct operation of the code, and a comparison to both 3DGRAPE and GRIDGEN3D. Since it was derived from 3DGRAPE, this technical memorandum should be used in conjunction with the 3DGRAPE manual (NASA TM-102224)

The Influence of the Andean Intellectual Property Regime on Access to Medicines in Latin America

This chapter is a contribution to Balancing Wealth and Health: Global Administrative Law and the Battle over Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in Latin America, Rochelle Dreyfuss & César Rodríguez-Garavito, eds. Part I of the chapter explains how the repeated interactions between the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) and domestic IP agencies in the Andean Community helped to build an effective IP rule of law and to solidify pro-consumer interpretations of regional patent and trademark rules. Part II documents how ATJ judges and agency officials enabled Andean governments to resist pressure from the United States and its pharmaceutical industry to circumvent the flexibilities in regional IP rules. Part III considers the broader implications of the Andean experience for access to medicines in Latin America, drawing on examples from the national case studies in this volume

Influence of a magnetic field during directional solidification of MAR-M 246 + Hf superalloy

An area that has been almost totally overlooked in the optimization of properties in directionally solidified superalloys is the control of microstructural features through the application of a magnetic field during solidification. The influence of a magnetic field on the microstructural features of a nickel-base superalloys is investigated. Studies were performed on the dendritic MAR-M 246+Hf alloy, which was solidified under both a 5 K gauss magnetic field and under no-applied-field conditions. The possible influences of the magnetic field on the solidification process were observed by studying variations in microstructural features including volume fraction, surface area, number, and shape of the carbide particles. Stereological factors analyzed also included primary and secondary dendrite arm spacing and the volume fraction of the interdendritic eutectic constituent. Microprobe analysis was performed to determine the chemistry of the carbides, dendrites, and interdendritic constituents, and how it varied between field and no-field solidification samples. Experiments involving periodic application and removal of the magnetic field were also performed in order to permit a comparison with structural variations observed in a MAR-M 246+Hf alloy solidified during KC-135 high-g, low-g maneuvers

A New International Human Rights Court for West Africa: The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice

The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ) is an increasingly active and bold international adjudicator of human rights violations in West Africa. Since acquiring jurisdiction over human rights issues in 2005, the ECCJ has issued several path-breaking judgments, including against the Gambia for the torture of journalists, against Niger for condoning modern forms of slavery, and against Nigeria for failing to regulate the multinational oil companies that polluted the Niger Delta. This article explains why ECOWAS member states authorized the ECCJ to review human rights suits by individuals but did not allow private actors to complain about violations of regional economic rules. In addition to explaining the ECCJ’s striking transformation, the article makes several other contributions. It illustrates how an existing international institution can be redeployed for new purposes; it highlights the contributions of civil society, supranational officials, and ECOWAS judges to expanding the Court’s mandate; it analyzes the ECCJ’s distinctive jurisdiction and access rules; and it shows how the ECCJ has survived challenges to its authority. Our analysis is based on original field research in Nigeria, including more than two-dozen interviews with judges, government officials, attorneys, and NGOs. We also draw upon the first-ever coding of all ECCJ decisions through 2010. The ECCJ’s transformation is also theoretically significant. The article’s final section and conclusion reassesses theories of regional integration, institutional change, and transnational legal mobilization in light of the ECCJ’s experience to demonstrate the implications of our findings for international institutions beyond West Africa

Islands of Effective International Adjudication: Constructing an Intellectual Property Rule of Law in the Andean Community

The Andean Community - a forty-year-old regional integration pact of small developing countries in South America - is widely viewed as a failure. In this Article, we show that the Andean Community has in fact achieved remarkable success within one part of its legal system. The Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) is the world\u27s third most active international court, with over 1400 rulings issued to date. Over 90% of those rulings concern intellectual property (IP). The ATJ has helped to establish IP as a rule of law island in the Andean Community where national judges, administrative officials, and private parties actively participate in regional litigation and conform their behavior to Andean IP rules. In the vast seas surrounding this island, by contrast, Andean rules remain riddled with exceptions, under-enforced, and often circumvented by domestic actors. We explain how the ATJ helped to construct the IP rule of law island and why litigation has not spilled over to other issue areas regulated by the Andean Community. Our analysis makes four broad contributions to international law and international relations scholarship. First, we adopt and apply a broad definition of an effective rule of law, using qualitative and quantitative analysis to explain how the Andean legal system contributes to changing national decision-making in favor of compliance with Andean rules. Our definition and our explanation of the ATJ\u27s contributions to constructing an effective rule of law provide a model that can be replicated elsewhere. Second, we explain how the Andean legal system has helped domestic IP administrative agencies in the region resist pressures for stronger IP protection from national executives, the United States, and American corporations. We emphasize the importance of these agencies rather than domestic judges as key constituencies that have facilitated the emergence of an effective rule of law for IP. As a result of the agencies\u27 actions, Andean IP rules remain more closely tailored to the economic and social needs of developing counties than do the IP rules of the Community\u27s regional neighbors. Third, the reality that the ATJ is effective, but only within a single issue area, makes the Andean experience of broader theoretical interest. We offer an explanation for why Andean legal integration has not extended beyond IP. But our answer suggests avenues for additional research. We note that Andean IP rules are more specific than other areas of Andean law and that most administrative agencies in the region lack the autonomy needed to serve as compliance partners for ATJ rulings. We also find that, outside of IP, the ATJ is unwilling to issue the sort of purposive interpretations that encourages private parties to invoke Andean rules in litigation. The result is both a lack of demand for and supply of ATJ rulings. Fourth, our study of the Andean legal system provides new evidence to assess three competing theories of effective international adjudication - theories that ascribe effectiveness to the design of international legal systems, to the ability of member states to sanction international judges, and to domestic legal and political factors. We also explore the possibility that rule of law islands may be emerging in other treaty-based systems subject to the jurisdiction of international tribunals