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The Role of Federal Courts in U.S. Customs & International Trade Law, by Patrick C. Reed. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1997. Pp. 453. $105.00 (hardcover).
PETER D. EHRENHAFT*
I.iNTRODUCTION
Patrick Reed, a successful trade practitioner in New York, has taken time out from billable hours to chronicle the history of the specialized federal courts responsible for judicial review of government actions affecting imports. He reaches a distressing conclusion: The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), in the decade and a half of its existence as the "Supreme Court" of trade law, has unequivocally held in favor of a foreign party challenging the administrators of U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty laws only once.l This decision stands alone despite numerous opportunities to rule.2 Of course this score-keeping is debatable, considering many of the cases brought before the CAFC raise numerous issues. The court surely has not denied all claims advanced by foreign parties in each case, but ultimately the court has usually upheld the U.S. agencies' imposition of added duties on the imports in question. Not surprisingly, Reed identifies the court's trade law decisions as "results oriented."3 Reed, based upon results from a serious study, demonstrates that domestic parties simply fare better;4 unfortunately, however, Reed provides few reasons for this development and prescribes no remedy.
II. THE SETTING
It is not too wide of the marks of history and fact to paraphrase Lincoln's famous trilogy by observing that the United States is a nation "of the lawyers, by the lawyers, and for the lawyers."5 Law and lawyering have deep, wide roots in the United States. The Declaration of Independence is, in essence, a lawyer's complaint against the King of England for breaching his contract with the colonists. Similarly, the Framers of the Constitution designed a blueprint to create a government "of laws and not of men,"6 and lawyers have used the system well to make government officials accountable. No other country has as well-developed a system of requiring government officials-from presidents to police officers-to follow fair and open procedures in reaching decisions, to publish their orders in accessible form, and to defend their actions before impartial judges.
Of course, such benefits do not come without costs to efficiency...