Implementing International Trade Agreements in Domestic Jurisdictions

Abstract

John H. Jackson had diverse interests ranging from the question of interpreting the GATT to the issue of how the GATT and other international economic agreements are implemented domestically. I had an honor of co-authoring a book with him in which the subject matter is the implementation of the Tokyo Round Agreements. In the following passages, I would like to reflect on my experience in working with him on this subject. The book which is the product of a joint program between the three scholars from the USA, Europe, and Japan was published in 1984 as John H. Jackson, JeanVictor Louis and Mitsuo Matsushita, Implementing the Tokyo Round: National Constitutions and International Economic Rules (The University of Michigan Press, 1984). John Jackson was Hessel E. Yntema Professor of Law in the Law School at the University of Michigan. Jean-Victor Louis was a professor of law at the Free University of Brussels and I was a professor of law at the University of Tokyo. The purpose of this project was to compare the process of implementing the Tokyo Round Agreements in the constitutional structure of those three jurisdictions. Implementation in broad sense means the process through which international agreements are put into effect in the jurisdiction in which it is implemented and incorporated into the domestic legal order. This involves issues such as who negotiates international agreements, who proposes and pushes through the domestic legal process necessary to make them effective in domestic jurisdiction, who has the power to regulate international trade and other economic relationships with other nations, and if such power is not vested with the executive branch of the government, what is the scope and limitation of the executive branch delegated to it by the legislature? All such questions are related to the allocation of powers among the different branches of government to negotiate and conclude international economic agreements with foreign nations and put them into effect domestically. In the USA, the Congress has the power to regulate foreign commerce and, in a strict sense of the term, the executive branch is not vested with the power to regulate the international