Ruxton McClure: COVID, Tele-working and the New Normal
Ruxton McClure is a dispute settlement lawyer in the Legal Affairs Division of the World Trade Organization. He previously worked for the Appellate Body Secretariat. Ruxton holds a Juris Doctorate from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and an LLM in International Economic Law and Policy from the University of Barcelona. He also graduated from UCT with a Bachelors of Social Science in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and Honours in Political Science. Any views expressed or implied in this article are his alone and are not attributable to or binding upon the WTO Secretariat.
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have adapted to the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic in much the same way that domestic law has done. In March and April 2020, many had hoped that the situation would be resolved within a matter of months, if not weeks. As those hopes faded and eventually died, international lawyers, governments, and non-governmental organisations overwhelmingly adapted their procedures and practices in order to ensure that the show can go on. Challenges continue to arise, and they are addressed, as they have been at the domestic level, through the wonderful world of technology. The show must go on.
hen the Editor invited me to submit an article for this edition of Altum Sonatur, she made the completely natural suggestion that, in light of my position as an international lawyer (I work for the Legal Affairs Division of the World Trade Organization), it would not be out of place to write something with an international flavour. Having chosen to ignore her (almost) completely , and write instead about my perspective on the “New Normal”, I confess to feeling a slight sense of guilt.
Like many domestic courts around the world, a wide number of international fora have embraced the use of technology to host “virtual” hearings, by which parties to international disputes can participate using online platforms. One challenge that is perhaps unique to the practice of international law is that participants in online hearings and meetings can be (and often are) quite literally on opposite sides of the planet. As a consequence, participation in virtual hearings and meetings can entail some temporal acrobatics. Some participants in a virtual hearing may find themselves pleading before the tribunal in the middle of the night, while their counterparts are skipping breakfast, To appease my conscience, I therefore feel compelled and the adjudicators are enjoying the middle of their to segue awkwardly into my main point by detouring working day. through a very brief discussion of the impact of COVID on international law. To put it as succinctly as The most fundamental aspect of the New Normal that possible, the practice of international law appears to I experience on a daily basis, however, is not unique to ALTUM SONATUR
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