Aggressive legalism

In the context of globalization and the subsequent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs), legal scholars generally refer to the political strategy used by a sovereign state to leverage a trade agreement’s substantive rules to counter behavior it deems unreasonable by its trading partners, as aggressive legalism.

Following World War II and the Bretton Woods Conference, the United States and the Allied Powers designed a new world economic order, partially emphasizing greater cooperative trade relationships. With the adoption of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1946 and via its replacement by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, these countries developed a comprehensive legal framework, that reflected their common legal traditions, to facilitate these relationships, including a system to settle disputes that favored litigation.

Somewhat under GATT in the 1950s but specifically with the adoption of the WTO, these countries engaged increased trade with Asian countries, as they became signatories. Initially, while the U.S. and the Allied Powers leveraged the agreement's respective legal frameworks and dispute-mechanisms including litigation to deal with disputes with their trading partners, many Asian countries choose not to. Instead, they avoided legal confrontation, in favor of bilateral negotiations to arrive at a settlement. Social-cultural disparities between each, concerning an inclination to litigate, are likely indicative of why.

However, in the 1980s and 1990s, under both GATT and WTO, many Asian countries began to utilize their legal frameworks to settle disputes.

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