Transatlantic trade agreements and adjudication without ‘protection of citizens’ and their fundamental rights? College of Europe Policy Brief #15.16, October 2016

Executive Summary > The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (EUCFR) is an integral part of EU law constituting, limiting, regulating and justifying EU powers and their exercise, including trade policy powers and EU free trade agreements. > The EUCFR protects fundamental rights, democracy, ‘public reason’, democratic support and legitimacy of the EU, the rule of law and other public goods also in the trade policy area. > The EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership risk dis-empowering citizens, undermining their fundamental rights and judicial remedies, and ‘re-fragmenting’ international investment law. > EU citizens rightly challenge the disregard by EU institutions for the Lisbon Treaty’s ‘cosmopolitan foreign policy mandate’ for external EU trade and investment policies and EU trade agreements. > Rather than exercising EU leadership for citizenoriented reforms of trade and investment agreements, EU institutions emulate poweroriented foreign trade policies by excluding rights of citizens under free trade agreements so as to limit their own legal, democratic and judicial accountabilities vis-à-vis citizens. > The potential welfare gains and ‘geopolitical importance’ of transatlantic free trade agreements justify civil society struggles against a ‘refeudalization' of EU powers

Role of p52 (NF-κB2) in LPS tolerance in a human B cell line

Cells of the weakly CD14 positive human B cell line RPMI 8226, clone 1, will mobilize NF-κB (p50/p65 and p50/p50) proteins and produce TNF mRNA when stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), When such cells are precultured with a low amount of LPS (50 - 250 ng/ml) for 3 - 4 days followed by a secondary stimulation with a high dose of LPS (1 mu g/ml) then the cytokine expression is strongly reduced, i.e, the cells have become tolerant. Western blot analysis of proteins of the NF-kappa B/rel family demonstrates cytoplasmic p50 and p65 for naive B cells plus a low level of p52. While with tolerance induction the pattern of p50 and p65 proteins remains essentially unchanged, the LPS tolerant 8226 cells show a dramatic increase of both p52 protein and its p100 precursor in the cytosol. This p52 is found strongly upregulated in Western blots of extracts from purified nuclei of tolerant cells, Also, gelshift analysis with the -605 kappa B motif Of the human TNF 5'-region shows an additional high mobility complex in LPS tolerant cells - a complex that is supershifted with an anti-p52 antibody, Functional analysis with the -1064 TNF 5'-region in front of the luciferase reporter gene demonstrates that transactivation of the TNF promoter is strongly reduced in tolerant cells, Also, overexpression of p52 will suppress activity of TNF promoter reporter gene constructs. Taken together these data show that tolerance to LPS in the human RPM1 8226 a cell line involves upregulation of the p52 (NF-kappa B2) gene, which appears to be instrumental in the blockade of TNF gene expression

Constitutional Analogies in the International Legal System

This Article explores issues at the frontier of international law and constitutional law. It considers five key structural and systemic challenges that the international legal system now faces: (1) decentralization and disaggregation; (2) normative and institutional hierarchies; (3) compliance and enforcement; (4) exit and escape; and (5) democracy and legitimacy. Each of these issues raises questions of governance, institutional design, and allocation of authority paralleling the questions that domestic legal systems have answered in constitutional terms. For each of these issues, I survey the international legal landscape and consider the salience of potential analogies to domestic constitutions, drawing upon and extending the writings of international legal scholars and international relations theorists. I also offer some preliminary thoughts about why some treaties and institutions, but not others, more readily lend themselves to analysis in constitutional terms. And I distinguish those legal and political issues that may generate useful insights for scholars studying the growing intersections of international and constitutional law from other areas that may be more resistant to constitutional analogies

Becoming common – ecological resistance, refusal, reparation

This chapter thinks through international law and posthuman theory by way of an example of ‘posthumanist commoning’. It explores the posthumanist and the commoning dimensions of the legal and political collective actions at hand. It does so by telling the story of the ‘insurgent lake’ of Rome – the ‘lago bullicante’. Bullicante is an archaic Italian term that signifies both ‘to boil’ (bollire) and ‘to get agitated’ (agitarsi). The ‘lake that boils and gets agitated’ refers to the artificial/natural lake that was accidentally created in 1992, when an underground parking lot was illegally constructed and inadvertently hit an aquifer, thereby flooding the construction site and nearby area, creating a one-hectare large lake in the heart of the city. With the lake, an insurgent political subjectivity emerged to resist and care for its preservation. Both the subjectivity and the struggle are articulated and practiced in non-liberal, non-individualistic, and in-human (or more and less than ‘human’) terms, thereby giving rise to a distinctive mode of ‘becoming common’. Drawing on the lago bullicante, I argue that this mode of ‘posthumanist commoning’ enacts particular practices of ecological resistance, refusal, and reparation. The transversal alliances forged within networks of transnational resisting collectives help exploring how posthuman theory can inform international law. It does so by availing methods of reconfiguring the categories of the human, the land, and its living ecology, while also revealing critical blind-spots and methodological/conceptual limitations of both posthuman theory and international law

Prevention and Settlement of International Trade Disputes Between the European Union and the United States

This Essay reflects recent international trade disputes between the European Community and the United States and classifies these disputes according to their characteristic elements in order to elaborate more effective strategies for the prevention or settlement of future disputes. The so far twelve GATT and WTO panel, appellate, and arbitration reports on the European Community’s import restrictions for bananas could have been avoided if, in the more than forty complaints before the European Community Court of Justice and in the numerous national court proceedings against the same import restrictions on bananas, the judges would have construed and applied European Community law in conformity with the precise and unconditional GATT/WTO obligations of the EC. The settlement of the EC-U.S. disputes over U.S. trade sanctions under the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, as well as over the discriminatory government procurement practices by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts vis-à-vis persons doing business with Myanmar, illustrate the importance of dispute prevention strategies. WTO panel proceedings are also sub-optimal means for the settlement of disputes over nondiscriminatory health protection measures, such as the EC import restrictions for hormone-fed beef and genetically modified organisms. This Essay concludes with proposals for EC-U.S. initiatives to strengthen dispute prevention strategies

On the Constitution of John H. Jackson

A Tribute to John H. Jackso

Constitutionalism and International Organizations

Peaceful cooperation among individuals and among states has be- come a globally recognized policy objective. The worldwide trend to- wards deregulation, market economies, protection of human rights and democracies reflects an increasing recognition that individual freedom, non-discrimination and rule of law are the best conditions for promoting individual and collective self-determination and social welfare. But in contrast to the long-standing constitutional theories for national democracies, there is a troubling paucity of theory on how to achieve a peaceful international order based on worldwide liberal rules. During the first half of the 20th century, government policies in international relations continued to be dominated by power politics, protectionism and pragmatic trial and error with tragic experiences of government failures, such as wars and unnecessary widespread poverty

Constitutionalism and International Organizations

Peaceful cooperation among individuals and among states has be- come a globally recognized policy objective. The worldwide trend to- wards deregulation, market economies, protection of human rights and democracies reflects an increasing recognition that individual freedom, non-discrimination and rule of law are the best conditions for promoting individual and collective self-determination and social welfare. But in contrast to the long-standing constitutional theories for national democracies, there is a troubling paucity of theory on how to achieve a peaceful international order based on worldwide liberal rules. During the first half of the 20th century, government policies in international relations continued to be dominated by power politics, protectionism and pragmatic trial and error with tragic experiences of government failures, such as wars and unnecessary widespread poverty