Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Contributors
- 1 International Courts and Tribunals and the Rule of Law
- 2 American Public Opinion on International Courts and Tribunals
- 3 Arbitration and Avoidance of War: The Nineteenth-Century American Vision
- 4 The United States and the International Court of Justice: Coping with Antinomies
- 5 The U.S. Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice: What Does “Respectful Consideration” Mean?
- 6 U.S. Attitudes toward International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
- 7 The United States and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- 8 From Paradox to Subsidiarity: The United States and Human Rights Treaty Bodies
- 9 The U.S. and International Claims and Compensation Bodies
- 10 Does the United States Support International Tribunals? The Case of the Multilateral Trade System
- 11 The United States and Dispute Settlement under the North American Free Trade Agreement: Ambivalence, Frustration, and Occasional Defiance
- 12 Dispute Settlement under NAFTA Chapter 11: A Response to the Critics in the United States
- 13 The United States and International Courts: Getting the Cost-Benefit Analysis Right
- Index
- References
11 - The United States and Dispute Settlement under the North American Free Trade Agreement: Ambivalence, Frustration, and Occasional Defiance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Contributors
- 1 International Courts and Tribunals and the Rule of Law
- 2 American Public Opinion on International Courts and Tribunals
- 3 Arbitration and Avoidance of War: The Nineteenth-Century American Vision
- 4 The United States and the International Court of Justice: Coping with Antinomies
- 5 The U.S. Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice: What Does “Respectful Consideration” Mean?
- 6 U.S. Attitudes toward International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
- 7 The United States and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- 8 From Paradox to Subsidiarity: The United States and Human Rights Treaty Bodies
- 9 The U.S. and International Claims and Compensation Bodies
- 10 Does the United States Support International Tribunals? The Case of the Multilateral Trade System
- 11 The United States and Dispute Settlement under the North American Free Trade Agreement: Ambivalence, Frustration, and Occasional Defiance
- 12 Dispute Settlement under NAFTA Chapter 11: A Response to the Critics in the United States
- 13 The United States and International Courts: Getting the Cost-Benefit Analysis Right
- Index
- References
Summary
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its two parallel agreements on labor and on the environment incorporate a broad and sometimes confusing variety of mechanisms for resolving the disputes that relate to the interpretation and application of certain NAFTA provisions in specific situations.
Essentially, there are six distinct dispute resolution procedures within the larger NAFTA framework:
those relating to foreign investment and investor-state disputes (Chapter 11),
financial services (Chapter 14, a variation on Chapter 20),
appeals of antidumping and countervailing duty (unfair trade) actions by administrative agencies (Chapter 19),
interpretation and application of the agreement generally (Chapter 20),
failure to enforce environmental laws (North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, or NAAEC), and
failure to enforce labor laws (North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, or NAALC).
The latter two are not discussed herein because neither arbitral process has ever been seriously considered for utilization and it is thus impossible to measure U.S. attitudes toward them. Likewise, financial services disputes, using a variation of the Chapter 20 mechanism, are discussed only briefly because no disagreement over financial services has yet been referred to arbitration.
It is evident that this impressive package was accepted with some ambivalence by the U.S. government; as we will see, each of these mechanisms was incorporated for a variety of mostly pragmatic and diplomatic, as well as legal, reasons.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Sword and the ScalesThe United States and International Courts and Tribunals, pp. 356 - 394Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
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