This article examines the impact of legal culture on Vietnam's engagement with the WTO, and its engagement in trade disputes in particular. It provides case studies of several Vietnamese trade disputes as a means of examining this theme - including the Vietnamese catfish case, involving the US requirement that catfish from Asia be labelled as 'tra' or 'basa'; and the impact of the Chinese-Thai Early Harvest Agreement of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) in 2003.

This article reflects upon the dynamics of the intellectual property (IP) agenda of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the legal framework provided by the WTO's Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). This article seeks to point out that disharmony between developed and developing states is not essentially a manifestation of the TRIPS Agreement or the WTO. Rather, the trade-intellectual property agenda is inherently complex. For this reason, it is not appropriate to describe the events in Cancún as a failure, but as an inevitable part of the protracted negotiation of a complex web of issues. Similarly, it is not reasonable to expect consensus to emerge from the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, and commentators and states alike should shift their focus from the question of 'success' to the question of whether progress, however incremental, has been made. Citation of original paper: L Toohey, 'Between Cancun and Hong Kong: The Agenda of the WTO's Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and the Tensions of Development' (2005) 9 Southern Cross University Law Review 235-255.

Community title schemes are an increasingly popular form of housing in Queensland and throughout Australia in general. Community title housing (typically apartment buildings and townhouses) involve medium to high-density living, which in turn tend to produce a higher incidence of neighbourhood disputes than lower density living options. However, a second reason for the prevalence of the disputes is the varied nature of interests in a community title scheme. Within the single scheme, there may be owner occupiers (either residential or commercial or both), tenants (again, residential, commercial or both), members of the body corporate committee, and property managers. Each of these types of stakeholders has different interests and perceptions of how a scheme ought to operate, with the potential for serious disputes to result. Recognising the potentially harmful effects of community title disputes and the need for accessible dispute resolution options, the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management (OBCCM) was established to provide specialist dispute resolution procedures. The OBCCM offers conciliation and adjudication, with avenues of appeal available to the newly-established Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The OBCCM's self-identified objective in relation to this service is to offer “a quality dispute resolution service which is timely and responsive.” In practice, the dispute resolution services are a hybrid of inquisitorial and adversarial approaches, focussing on the legal aspects of the dispute. This paper combines academic and practitioner perspectives to explore the possibility of a therapeutic approach to body corporate and community title disputes. The paper firstly provides an overview of the dispute resolution context of community title disputes and the role of the OBCCM. It then considers the effect of current OBCCM practices on participant wellbeing, and questions whether the introduction of a therapeutic approach might not only improve outcomes in discrete cases, but in fact have the potential to enhance or restore community living within troubled schemes. Finally, the paper comments on the type of legal and dispute system changes that might be required to facilitate such an approach.

The existing literature on ASEAN's trade disputes focuses on whether the organization will indeed develop into a rules-based association, or whether political methods will continue to be used in preference to legal principle. The conclusion, generally from outside observers, is that if ASEAN seeks to prioritize economic integration and increased cooperation on trade liberalization, it will likely be forced to become more 'legalized'. The discussion thus tends to revolve around legal mechanisms that will best achieve this end-point.The assumption that underpins the existing literature is that it is an inevitability, or perhaps simply a matter of time, that the available dispute settlement mechanisms will be used by the ASEAN members. However, this Chapter argues that Western authors need to rethink their analysis of ASEAN, and that the key questions should be framed differently.It argues that across the range of major ASEAN disputes - those concerning trade and territory - the ASEAN members have shown clear preference for quiet self-resolution or external adjudication rather than internal adjudication, not just in relation to trade disputes, but also in relation to territorial disputes. More importantly 'legalism', within the ASEAN context, does not mean referring disputes to institutionalized and procedurally sophisticated adjudicatory mechanisms, but rather relying on the legal rights and obligations established by the ASEAN agreements in a substantive sense.Whereas the WTO has the benefit of being a self-contained regime for trade, in ASEAN trade must cohabit the same forum as other, more explosive, political concerns such as territorial integrity and the physical security of the state. ASEAN members rely instead on the ̳ASEAN Way', which holds that progress can be made through consensus and discussion, not confrontation. Paradoxical as it may sound to the adversarially-inclined Western trade lawyer, the absence of ASEAN trade law cases may actually be an indicator of the system's success.

As it enters its second decade of operation, the World Trade Organization (hereinafter “WTO”) is operating in a vastly different context to that which was present at its creation in 1995. There seems to be a consensus that, although difficult, reform is necessary to reinvigorate the WTO. On the other hand, successful reform to the formal rules of the WTO Agreements has so far been largely elusive. This paper focuses on how to revitalize the WTO in an absence of formal rule change, by focusing on the backbone of the WTO organism -- its Secretariat. The paper argues that reinvigorating the Secretariat in terms of its mandate, powers and composition are a comparatively simple but effective mechanism for improving the vitality of the WTO as a whole. In doing so, it offers a new metaphor by which the relationship between members, organization and community could be described, namely one of stewardship. The stewardship model reconceptualizes thought leadership in the WTO as a joint, rather than competitive process, led by the Secretariat, with great potential to revitalize the WTO.

These draft “Rules of Procedure” is to implement the draft Agreement on the Establishment of the Asia-Pacific Regional Mediation Organization (the ARMO Agreement). In order to have a friendly, swift and peaceful settlement of dispute under the ARMO, the mediation rules are of critical importance. These draft “Rules of Procedure” were prepared to show the possible real operation of the ARMO State-to-State (or Economy-to-Economy) mediation. These draft “Rules of Procedures” include articles addressing the governing rules of the ARMO mediation, the request for mediation, merger of mediation, appointment and replacement of mediators, conflict of interest and disqualification, competence of mediator, venue of mediation, representation and assistance of parties, mediator's role and duties, mediation schedule and meeting, parties' participation and cooperation, parties' written submissions, offer of settlement, confidentiality of information and proceedings, time limit for the completion of mediation, settlement agreement, fees and costs, and conclusion of the proceedings. The rules are flexible enough to accommodate different needs of the parties. Hence, parties still hold the ultimate decision to shape their procedure. But the rules also provide comprehensive basis for the parties and mediators to effectively conduct their proceedings. Hence, the parties can alternatively rely more on the mediators to shape the procedure.