I am still at the American
Society of International Law meeting today, and on the sidelines I went to a
University of Michigan Law School alumni breakfast. It was my pleasure to see Ginny Stein, who is
the widow of my Michigan law professor, Eric Stein. For many years Professor Stein taught
international law courses, including one of the first courses on European Union
law. Much of my own teaching and
scholarship draws on what I learned in 1991 in his EU law course.
In honor of the Steins, I am
reposting a previous post on the EU Cassis de Dijon case. This is the foundational case in EU law, and
the source of a good memory of the Steins. During the 1991 course, we spent an
entire lecture on Cassis de Dijon, and I asked Professor Stein what cassis de Dijon
was and why anyone would bother to bring a lawsuit about it. So at the end of the course, Mrs. Stein
brought in shot glasses of cassis de Dijon for everyone to try, based on my
query (hint: it tastes like Ribena mixed with vodka).
Unfortunately for my ASEAN
law students, we don’t have any such cases because the Enhanced Dispute
Settlement Mechanism (EDSM) protocol has never been invoked. The closest case analog is the WTO case on
Thailand-Cigarettes brought by the Philippines and we don’t allow smoking at
NUS! As for the real analogue, the ASEAN
Industrial Cooperation (AICO) scheme, I don’t have enough money to give each
student a car!
Here's the link.
