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Columbia University
Member
WTO Appellate body
Merit E. Janow is a leading expert in international trade and antitrust law and policy. She has extensive experience in academia, government and business, with an early specialization in the Asia-Pacific region.
Academic and Professional Responsibilities
For the past eleven years, Merit E. Janow has been a Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Columbia Law School. She teaches advanced courses in international trade/WTO law, comparative antitrust law and international economic policy. For two years (2002-2004), she was also Director of the Masters Program in International Affairs, which is the largest program of its kind in the United States, with over 700 students from around the world. She has served as Chair of Columbia University’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing, which is responsible for advising the Trustees on ethical and social issues that arise in the management of the University’s endowment.
Professor Janow is currently one of the seven Members of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body, which is the court of final appeal for intergovernmental trade disputes in Geneva, Switzerland. She is the only North American Member and the first female to serve on the Appellate Body. The Appellate Body hears final appeals on issues of law and legal interpretation in international trade disputes between countries that are members of the WTO and the trade agreements that are covered by WTO. The Members of the Appellate Body are selected by a vote of the member nations and customs unions of the WTO.
Previous Governmental & Private Sector Experience
From 1997 to 2000, Professor Janow served as the Executive Director of an international antitrust advisory committee to the Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to joining Columbia’s faculty, Professor Janow was Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan and China (1990-93). She was responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing U.S. trade policies and negotiating strategies towards Japan and China. At USTR, she was a key negotiator in a dozen sectoral trade agreements with Japan and China covering diverse areas such as intellectual property rights, market access, computers, telecommunications, legal services, structural impediments, glass, semiconductors, and paper products. She participated in more than 35 official trips to Japan and China. Early in her career, Professor Janow was a corporate lawyer specializing in cross-border mergers and acquisitions with the global law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York and before that she worked on international trade policy matters at a U.S. think tank.
Professor Janow is the author of several books and dozens of articles on international trade and antitrust law and policy, Japan and Asia Pacific legal and policy matters. She grew up in Tokyo, Japan, and is fluent in Japanese. She has a JD from Columbia Law School and a BA in Asian Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For the last three years, Professor Janow has been on the Board of Directors of two global mutual funds of the American Funds. For both funds she serves as Chair of the Contracts and the Proxy Committees and as a member of the Audit Committees. In 2005, she joined the Board of the NASDAQ Stock Market and Japan Society.