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This article traces the evolution of international attitudes toward child labour, and outlines its relationship to the global economy. It examines the way in which international treaties promulgated by the International Labor Organization (ilo) have conceived of child labour over time. At the national level, the most extreme pro-child labour position may be found in recent Bolivian legislation that recognizes work performed by children as young as ten years old. Much has been written on the problem of conflicting global values on child labour, but all agree that exploitative forms should be eliminated. The author updates her earlier recommendation that the World Trade Organization should place conditions on participation in the global economy by requiring its member states to honour core ilo standards. Eliminating exploitative child labour could thus be linked indirectly to the global economy, by requiring the elimination of children's work detrimental to the child's full development.

The constitutionalization of the world trade system has elevated it in legal thinking and given it a false aura of permanency and immutability. The debate among legal academics on this has centered on the technical aspects of trade disputes rather than on the critical issue of the normative nature and effects of the system on those most affected— workers. The opportunistic actors who successfully argued for the creation and constitutionalization of the system have managed to relegate the debate about its continuing benefits to the side. They have benefited from legal scholars' failure to adequately evaluate and analyze the real effects of the system. Being a trade law dissident is more important now than ever before.

I imagine most people with an interest in the subject have their own working definition of globalization. My definition goes something like this: Globalization is at least in part about the spread of mass markets and common tastes, albeit with variations. International trade law, by reducing the possibility that individual countries can "prefer" their own productions, is one of the mechanisms for facilitating the spread of these common tastes. I am by no means implying that the global tastes are elevated ones; in fact, the mass-appeal products sought might be inferior in many ways to what came before. The irony of the franchise, for instance, is thatbetterorworsedoes not matter—only sameness. The important thing is that the tastes are commonly held across a national-culture-free zone, and recognized as such.