Trade Law

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26.1
Trademarking Terroir: Geographical Indications as a Form of Cultural Property in the U.S.-EU Trade War
Sara Evans
A.B., Princeton University; J.D. Candidate 2026, The University of Chicago Law School

Many thanks to my family, friends, colleagues on the Chicago Journal of International Law, faculty advisor Professor Jonathan Masur, and former colleagues who introduced me to GIs, IP, and American winemaking during my 21st summer.

I. Introduction

A. Background and Context

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26.1
From Human Mapping to Machine Embedding: Uncovering Key Legal Drivers and Deterrents of ISDS Filing Frequencies
Sangchul Park
Associate Professor, Seoul National University School of Law

This paper was funded by the 2023 Research Fund of the SNU Law Research Institute, donated by the SNU Law Foundation. I thank the CJIL Editorial Board members for organizing the symposium and for their thoughtful editing of this paper, including Mr. Ian G. Peacock’s suggestion of zero-inflated models. This research project has benefitted from the Microsoft Accelerating Foundation Models Research (AFMR) grant program.

International investment agreements (IIAs), while intended to prop cross-border investment, have faced persistent criticism for potentially undermining the regulatory sovereignty of developing countries. Various mechanisms have been proposed as alternatives to traditional bilateral investment treaty (BIT) models, often with the goal of curbing investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) filings. While existing research has uncovered the impact of nonlegal factors, such as macroeconomic crises, little has been done to systematically examine how legal provisions in either major model BITs or ISDS reform toolboxes influence ISDS filing patterns. To address this gap, this Article analyzes the interplay between (i) legal texts of 2,148 BITs and treaties with investment provisions (TIPs) and (ii) the occurrence of 1,060 ISDS cases. It builds on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)’s IIA Mapping Project to assess the impact of key legal deterrents recommended by ISDS reform proponents, while leveraging large language models to identify the key legal drivers of ISDS filings. The outcome of Poisson regression appears to reveal that: (i) procedural provisions resembling those in the 2012 U.S. Model BIT are the strongest positive predictors of ISDS filings, outweighing the impact of economic crises, whereas substantive provisions such as investor treatment and expropriation clauses are not; (ii) the effectiveness of deterrent provisions remains inconclusive, suggesting that their ability to curb ISDS filings requires further scrutiny; and (iii) the assumption that IIAs between developed host countries and developing states are more prone to ISDS filings is unsubstantiated. These findings could contribute to ongoing discussions on BIT reform by highlighting the legal determinants of ISDS frequencies, with implications for policymakers seeking to balance investment protection with regulatory autonomy.
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18.1
A Method Inside the Madness: Understanding the European Union State Aid and Taxation Rulings
Christopher Bobby

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Dhammika Dharmapala for his thoughtful guidance throughout the writing process, as well as Jacob Grossman for his comments and numerous crucial edits. Additionally, I would like to thank my partner Alysson Malgieri for her infinite patience and emotional support at all times, everywhere.

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18.1
Communitizing Transnational Regulatory Concerns
Sungjoon Cho, Jacob Radecki, and Cecilia Suh
Sungjoon Cho is a Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law. Jacob Radecki is an Associate at Levin & Perconti. Cecilia Suh is an Associate at Funkhouser Vegosen Liebman & Dunn. We thank Claire Kelly, Kenneth Abbott, Duncan Snidal, David Levi-Faur, Timothy Lytton, Joel Trachtman and participants of SASE Regulatory Intermediaries Workshop in London and the WTO 20 Conference at Harvard Law School for their helpful feedback. Kathleen Mallon provided excellent research assistance.