The Liverpool Law Review 

About: The Liverpool Law Review is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Philosophy of law & Human rights. It has an ISSN identifier of 0144-932X. Over the lifetime, 549 publications have been published receiving 1890 citations. The journal is also known as: Liverpool law review.

TRIPS-Plus Free Trade Agreements and Access to Medicines

Abstract: The battle over access to essential medicines revolves around the rights to issue compulsory licenses and to manufacture and export generic versions of brand name drugs to expand access. Global brand name pharmaceutical firms have sought to ration access to medicines and have used their economic and political clout to shape United States trade policy. They have succeeded in getting extremely restrictive TRIPS-Plus, and even US-Plus, intellectual property provisions into regional and bilateral free trade agreements. Asymmetrical power relations continue to shape intellectual property policy, reducing the amount of leeway that poorer and/or weaker states have in devising regulatory approaches that are most suitable for their individual needs and stages of development. While the overall trend is disturbing, some recent activities in the World Health Organization and evidence of greater unity behind health-based TRIPs flexibilities provide some grounds for cautious optimism.

Four Lessons for Developing Countries from the Trade Negotiations Over Access to Medicines

Abstract: After the Agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) came into operation in 1995 developing countries have found themselves in a process of continual negotiation over intellectual property rights and access to medicines. These negotiations have taken place in the World Trade Organization and in the context of free trade agreements. The paper suggests that the only real win for developing countries has been the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health in 2001. What have been the lessons for developing countries in a decade of negotiations over access to medicines? Drawing on themes of rule complexity and regulatory ritualism the paper discusses four key lessons for developing countries. It concludes by arguing that developing countries will do better if they adopt a networked governance approach to negotiation rather than continuing to rely on traditional coalition formation.

“Not Gods But Animals”: Human Dignity and Vulnerable Subjecthood

Abstract: Drawing on earlier work on the conceptual structure of dignity, this paper will suggest a particular type of connectedness between vulnerability and human dignity; namely, that the “organizing idea” of human dignity is the idea of a particular sort of ethical response to universal human vulnerability. It is common ground among many, if not all, approaches to ethics that vulnerability requires us to respond ethically. Here, I argue that human dignity is distinctive among ethical values in that it values us because of, rather than in spite of, or regardless of, our universal vulnerability. The term “dignity” is used synonymously with “human dignity” here, since an investigation of the dignity of non-human entities forms no part of the present examination.