Friday, April 5, 2013

ASEAN's Cassis de Dijon?


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.