Henckels: Permission to Act: The Legal Character of General and Security Exceptions in International Trade and Investment Law

Caroline Henckels (Monash Univ. - Law) has posted Permission to Act: The Legal Character of General and Security Exceptions in International Trade and Investment Law (International & Comparative Law Quarterly, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The dyadic rule-exception structure common to many legal systems has posed particular interpretive difficulties in international trade and investment law. Adjudicators have interpreted general and security exceptions in GATT, GATS and cognate provisions of investment treaties in divergent ways, and the analytic character of these provisions is under-theorized in the literature. This article argues that we should understand exceptions from a deontological perspective as permissions that affirm governmental regulatory capacity and thus limit the scope of the commands set out in the treaty. This characterization of exceptions has both symbolic and practical implications, of which this article discusses two: determining the exception’s applicability as a preliminary matter rather than as a defence, which would permit consideration of regulatory purpose at the point of obligation; and whether the applicability of an exception is properly a question of merits or jurisdiction.