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Abstract

The Free Trade Agreement concluded between the United States and Canada, and signed on January 2, 1988, has a number of features that distinguish it among the trade agreements of the United States. It eliminates all tariffs, reduces restrictions on business travel, and establishes ground rules for trade in services and for foreign investment. In this latter respect, the Agreement is unique among major international trade agreements of the world. But one of the most enduring aspects of the Agreement is likely to be the provisions establishing a series of dispute settlement mechanisms. This last observation would probably surprise almost anyone familiar with existing international trade agreements. The dispute settlement mechanisms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade are notoriously weak. Other free trade agreements, such as the European Free Trade Agreement and the free trade agreement between Australia and New Zealand, have been more significant to economists and scholars of international relations interested in the effect of such agreements on trade patterns and the development of international organization than to legal scholars who are attempting to find new forms of dispute settlement. The emerging importance of dispute resolution procedures in the trade context, of which the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement is the best current example, is an economic legal development that the legal community can ill afford to ignore. The perspectives of legal scholarship must be brought to bear on the formation and implementation of dispute settlement rules to inform legal practitioners of new developments central to the interests of clients for whom, in increasing numbers, international transactions are routine business. The papers in this symposium undertake this examination. The papers provide a series of perspectives that focus on the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement, the issues surrounding the Agreement, and on broader issues of dispute resolution in international trade.

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