Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
This journal utilises an Online Peer Review Service (OPRS) for submissions. By clicking "Continue" you will be taken to our partner site
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ajil.
Please be aware that your Cambridge account is not valid for this OPRS and registration is required. We strongly advise you to read all "Author instructions" in the "Journal information" area prior to submitting.
To save this undefined to your undefined account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your undefined account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Digitization has greatly expanded the scope of trade, and with it the scope of trade law. But the regulatory framework, although growing in bilateral and regional fora, is highly dynamic and remains fragmented, increasing the challenges facing digital trade law.
Commercial activity and regulatory oversight of the digital economy are growing apace. This essay argues that regulatory heterogeneity can deter digital trade without discrimination. Domestic policies that are not discriminatory can still result in fragmentation of the global digital economy, if sufficiently heterogeneous. We find that rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in digital trade agreements offer important directions but insufficiently mitigate heterogeneity. We suggest that heterogeneity should be addressed through the progressive expansion of international trade law. We emphasize the importance of encouraging regulatory coherence and pre-empting the formation of digital blocks.
Trade and human rights have had a complex and contentious relationship. While trade experts assume that human rights and trade law are mutually supportive, human rights lawyers have seldom shared this opinion. Rather, they argue that across different contexts, such as climate change, culture, and development, the hard rules of international trade law focus almost exclusively on economic values and sideline human rights. This essay seeks to shed more light on these interfaces, focusing particularly on the tensions between trade law and the first generation of human rights, like privacy and free speech, that have been rarely discussed so far. It also addresses a gap in the literature on international economic law and human rights with respect to the impact of digitization. In particular, the essay focuses on the human rights implications of digital trade rulemaking, as a relatively new and dynamic subset of international trade law.
The links between and among digital trade, development, and inequality are multifaceted and ever evolving. They depend on what is understood as development and as inequality, concepts that transcend the North-South divide, and the fora in which these issues arise. Conceptually, development and inequality are intrinsically intertwined as the measures to address both are often complementary or even the same. In this essay, we consider development and inequality as pertaining to the ability of developing countries and least-developed countries (LDCs) to shape and participate in the digital economy, and particularly, the regulatory framework for digital trade. We explore how the relationships between digital trade, development, and inequality are addressed in the main venues for digital trade rulemaking: the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). We then examine two contentious issues in digital trade: the customs duty moratorium and data governance.
This essay addresses the challenges of the digital economy in the context of cybersecurity threats that have growing implications for national security. It analyzes cybersecurity-related exceptions to international trade rules to explore whether and how these exceptions protect the state's digital policy space. The essay argues that the pre-digital era exceptions to trade rules are too narrowly framed to address cybersecurity concerns. This is in contrast to trends in the new generation of international trade agreements that create expansive security exceptions that are designed to reset the balance between international trade and national security. These new approaches must, however, be carefully guarded against potential abuses.