Burden of Proof in Environmental Disputes in the WTO: Legal Aspects

This paper discusses allocation of burden of proof in environmental disputes in the WTO system. Besides laying down the natural principles that (i) the complainant carries the burden to (ii) make a prima facie case that its claim holds, WTO adjudicating bodies have said little of more general nature. The paper therefore examines the case law of relevance to environmental policies, to establish the rules concerning burden of proof that are likely to be applied in such disputes. Evaluating this case law, the paper makes two observations,: First, in cases submitted under the GATTWTO, adjudicating bodies have committed errors regarding the required amount of evidence (the burden of persuasion); and second, such errors, as well as errors concerning the determination of the party to carry the burden of providing this evidence (the burden of production), have been committed in disputes submitted under the TBT/SPS Agreements. These errors largely seem attributable to the general absence of methodology regarding the interpretation of some key substantive provisions featuring in the three Agreements.Burden of Proof; Burden of Production; Burden of Persuasion; WTO; Environment

A Survey of the Literature on the WTO Dispute Settlement System

This paper surveys the law and economics literature on WTO dispute settlement. As a background, we first briefly lay out main features of the legal framework, and discuss possible roles of a dispute settlement mechanism. We then discuss the two main themes in the empirical literature on dispute settlement: (i) the determinants of participation by members as complainants, respondents and third parties; and (ii) the role of the DS system for the settling of disputes. The paper finally points to a number of areas that are in need of further research.WTO; Dispute Settlement; DSU

The Permissible Reach of National Environmental Policies

Trading nations exchange tariff concessions in the context of trade liberalizing rounds. Tariffs, nonetheless, are not the only instrument affecting the value of a concession. Domestic instruments affect it as well, but public order is not negotiable, and, consequently, is not scheduled. Public order is unilaterally defined, but must respect the default rules concerning allocation of jurisdiction which are common to all WTO Members and bind them by virtue of their appurtenance to the international community. In this paper, we focus on the interaction between trade and environment. The purpose of this study is to highlight how these rules and the GATT/WTO jointly determine the scope for unilateral environmental policies for WTO Members. In the study we examine the relevant multilateral framework dealing with this issue, as well as the relevant GATT and WTO case-law. We also briefly present the jurisdictional default rules in Public International Law. As a means of focusing the discussion, we consider a series of scenarios, partly building on factual aspects of cases that have already been brought before the WTO. These scenarios are intended to isolate issues of specific interest from a policy point of view. For each scenario we then seek to determine what would the outcome be, in case WTO adjudicating bodies were to explicitly take account of the default rules concerning allocation of jurisdiction, something which has not been done to date. Our main conclusions are two-fold: on occasion, the outcome would be different, had WTO panels observed the default rules concerning allocation of jurisdiction; more generally, the default rules can help us understand the limits of some key obligations assumed under the WTO. Crucially, absent recourse to the default rules concerning allocation of jurisdiction, one risks understanding non-discrimination (the key GATT-obligation) as an instrument aimed to harmonize conditions of competition across markets, and not within markets, as the intent of negotiators has always been.Trade and Environment; WTO

Space station operating system study

The current phase of the Space Station Operating System study is based on the analysis, evaluation, and comparison of the operating systems implemented on the computer systems and workstations in the software development laboratory. Primary emphasis has been placed on the DEC MicroVMS operating system as implemented on the MicroVax II computer, with comparative analysis of the SUN UNIX system on the SUN 3/260 workstation computer, and to a limited extent, the IBM PC/AT microcomputer running PC-DOS. Some benchmark development and testing was also done for the Motorola MC68010 (VM03 system) before the system was taken from the laboratory. These systems were studied with the objective of determining their capability to support Space Station software development requirements, specifically for multi-tasking and real-time applications. The methodology utilized consisted of development, execution, and analysis of benchmark programs and test software, and the experimentation and analysis of specific features of the system or compilers in the study

Single-qubit optical quantum fingerprinting

We analyze and demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of linear optical single-qubit fingerprinting over its classical counterpart. For one-qubit fingerprinting of two-bit messages, we prepare `tetrahedral' qubit states experimentally and show that they meet the requirements for quantum fingerprinting to exceed the classical capability. We prove that shared entanglement permits 100% reliable quantum fingerprinting, which will outperform classical fingerprinting even with arbitrary amounts of shared randomness.Comment: 4 pages, one figur

Winners and Losers in the Panel Stage of the WTO Dispute Settlement System

A significant body of research has sought to examine claims that developing countries are under-represented as complainants, and/or over-represented as respondents in the WTO dispute settlement system. Most of this literature has focused on their propensity to participate, the idea being that under-representation as complainants or over representation as respondents would suggest a bias in the system. This paper provides some descriptive statistics that could shed light on a different manifestation of a “bias” against developing countries. It employs a dataset containing information on the legal claims made in each WTO dispute between 1995 and 2006, as well as a rough classification as to whether each specific claim was accepted or not by the respective panel. The data is used to compare the extent to propensity by which G2 countries, other industrialized countries, and developing countries have won the claims that they have made before panels.WTO; Dispute Settlement; Developing Countries; Winners and Losers

Soft Contract Verification

Behavioral software contracts are a widely used mechanism for governing the flow of values between components. However, run-time monitoring and enforcement of contracts imposes significant overhead and delays discovery of faulty components to run-time. To overcome these issues, we present soft contract verification, which aims to statically prove either complete or partial contract correctness of components, written in an untyped, higher-order language with first-class contracts. Our approach uses higher-order symbolic execution, leveraging contracts as a source of symbolic values including unknown behavioral values, and employs an updatable heap of contract invariants to reason about flow-sensitive facts. We prove the symbolic execution soundly approximates the dynamic semantics and that verified programs can't be blamed. The approach is able to analyze first-class contracts, recursive data structures, unknown functions, and control-flow-sensitive refinements of values, which are all idiomatic in dynamic languages. It makes effective use of an off-the-shelf solver to decide problems without heavy encodings. The approach is competitive with a wide range of existing tools---including type systems, flow analyzers, and model checkers---on their own benchmarks.Comment: ICFP '14, September 1-6, 2014, Gothenburg, Swede

Coherent Production of Pairs of Parabosons of Order 2

A parameter-free statistical model is used to study multiplicity signatures for coherent production of charged-pairs of parabosons of order p=2 in comparison with those arising in the case of ordinary bosons, p=1. Two non-negative real parameters arise because "ab" and "ba" are fundamentally distinct pair operators of charge "+1", A-quanta and charge "-1", B-quanta parabosons. In 3D plots of P(q)_m = "The probability of m paraboson charged-pairs and q positive parabosons" versus and , the p=1 curve is found to lie on the relatively narrow 2D p=2 surface.Comment: 25 pages, 16 figures, no macro