The Fifth Annual University of Idaho International Law Symposium continues the tradition of bringing together a select group of international law scholars and practitioners for an intimate and collegial exchange around a topic of international law with unique relevance to Idaho.  This year’s symposium focuses broadly on issues of international trade and development.

Over the past decade, international trade has increasingly become entwined with international law. As a result, a growing number of domestic policies affecting matters of paramount importance to countries must take cognizance of a complex of regional and international trade regimes, including the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the World Trade Organization. So, too, international legal regimes that were formerly regarded as self-contained now find themselves competing against or cooperating with international trade regimes to advance human rights and environmental goals.  Indeed, winning the right to participate in these trade regimes has emerged as one of the most compelling inducements for states’ subscription to and respect for other international law regimes.

This new role for trade regimes has been controversial, and can by no means be viewed as an unequivocal success for international law in a broader sense.  Some believe that international trade law is responding to and harnessing the forces of globalization in a fashion that advances the broader interests of the international community, including the special interests of developing countries.  Critics, however, argue that international trade law fosters globalization for the exploitation of developing societies while facilitating the loss of high-wage manufacturing and service jobs in the developed world.

The symposium will explore these broad themes in several panels and in a keynote address from Professor Frank Garcia, a renowned commentator on and scholar of the tension between free and fair trade.

In a dedicated panel, as well as a keynote address from U.S. Senator Larry Craig, special attention will be given to the long-standing tensions between the U.S. and Canada over trade in softwood lumber.  Idaho has a particular stake in the dispute over whether Canada was providing unfair subsidies to its domestic timber industry.  In 2004, the estimated sales value of Idaho's primary wood and paper products was $ 1.99 billion, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all the labor income generated in Idaho and more than one-tenth of the state's total employment.  Dramatically suggesting the importance of international law to America’s heartland, the most recent manifestation of the dispute brought the parties before NAFTA and WTO settlement panels.  The symposium’s consideration of the softwood lumber dispute represents the first scholarly retrospective since a new, seven-year agreement between President Bush and Prime Minister Harper was formalized in July, 2006.