Semester No. 1: Gone with the wind

Having uploaded my last examination file—Prof. First’s exciting Business Crime orgy—I felt a little bit better. The last weeks were hard for manifold reasons, the worst being the monotony of re-reading hundreds and thousands of pages of textbooks, notes, and case briefs. Then came the exams themselves, witty but distressing. Gonna make you sweat, apparently, was the Profs’ motto for the exam season. Anyway, we found relief at the traditional SBA party, this time at B-Bar, 4th and Bowery, where the students had some drinks and an opportunity to dance, i.e. a form of getting some much needed exercise. Immediately after the official end of the exam period—12:00 a.m.—we started discussing the questions. Most hotly debated was, beyond a reasonable doubt, Prof. von Bogdandy’s WTO Law exam. Did Article III:4 or XI:1 GATT apply? Or none of them? And what about most-favoured-nation treatment?

As far as Quang and I are concerned, we bet on a combination of Article I and Article XI. And we continuously and repetitively herald the main lesson learned in this truly great class: The WTO is not about free trade. The rest is history.