International and Comparative Law

In the week of Monday 12th through Friday 16th, International Comparative and Legal Studies, together with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Student Bar Association, and our wonderful students, is hosting “International Week.” We will discuss, NAFTA II, 70th Anniversary of UDHR, Careers in International Law, and the fight against corruption. We also will eat, dance and drink food from around the world.

After much public fanfare, the United States, Mexico, and Canada announced on September 30, 2018, a new trade deal to replace the 1994 NAFTA treaty. The new treaty, called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA), incorporates many of the concerns the U.S.’ industry had raised over the recent years. This panel will explore the new aspects of USMCA, and question what else this new treaty with the U.S.’s principal trading partners may affect.

On October 24, 2018, AUWCL's Trade, Investment and Development Program hosted the XIV Symposium on International Trade in a timely moment, as the rule-based world trade system is facing a systemic crisis. Even though it helped developed and developing economies grow in the last twenty years, has softened the blow of the 2008 financial crisis, and helped enforce the WTO agreements through its dispute settlement mechanism, WTO member countries have been recently acting with complete disregard to its rules.

On Monday, October 1, 2018, the ICJ delivered its judgment in the case between Bolivia and Chile rejecting all eight of Bolivia’s arguments claiming that Chile had an “obligation to negotiate” sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean. Dean Emeritus Claudio Grossman served as the Agent of Chile in this case.

On October 11, 2018, Mr. Rufus Yerxa, President of the National Foreign Trade Council spoke at AUWCL on "The Great Paradox: Economic Nationalism in an Interdependent Age." Discussing the growing trend towards economic nationalism in the growing interdependence of the world's major economies, Yerxa raised a major economic question of our time: will this trend disrupt global growth and lead to a breakdown of world order, or will these tensions be resolved in a way that creates fairer, more balanced economic relations?

The International Jurist, a magazine from the publishers of National Jurist and Prelaw, has recognized American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) as one of 25 law schools across the nation to offer the best experience for lawyers from outside the U.S.