Shrimps, Turtles and Procedure: Global Standards for National Administrations

Abstract

As the decision of the Appellate Body of the WTO in the Turtle/Shrimp case amply demonstrated, international treaties or international organizations may impose procedural principles, like the principle of due process, upon State administrations. Given the centralization of State administrative law and the decentralized character of the relevant international regimes, this penetration of global law into national legal systems, which has an effect upon national administrative laws, provokes further discussion. The paper focuses on the peculiarities of this global regime, discussing the global regulators, the subjects of the regulations, the regulatory process, and the legal status of the rules in the framework of the SPS, the TBT, the GATS, and the FIEIC. In that respect, the paper attempts to determine how the interference of the global with the national occurs, whether it corresponds to the practices of other international legal systems, and whether international regulatory forms resemble national ones.

Keywords: WTO, International Law

JEL Classification: K23, K33