World Trade Law

This is primarily a textbook for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students of law. However, practising lawyers and policy-makers who are looking for an introduction to WTO law will also find it invaluable. The book covers both the institutional and substantive law of the WTO. While the treatment of the law is often quite detailed, the main aim of this textbook is to make clear the basic principles and underlying logic of WTO law and the world trading system. Each section contains questions and assignments, to allow students to assess their understanding and develop useful practical skills. At the end of each chapter there is a helpful summary, as well as an exercise on specific, true-to-life international trade problems.

This is a comprehensive overview of the law and practice of the World Trade Organization. It begins with the institutional law of the WTO, moving eventually to the consequences of globalization. New chapters on Trade in Agriculture and on Government Procurement and Trade.

This third edition of one of the leading textbooks on world trade law offers what is, in a number of ways, a unique perspective on this important subject. Combining the best aspects of both casebook and treatise, this comprehensive textbook provides detailed explanations and analysis of the law to help understand the issues as well as case extracts to offer a flavour of the judicial reasoning of trade adjudicators. Moreover, the book is truly global in outlook, being equally useful for students of international trade law in the UK, Europe, the US, Asia and elsewhere around the world. This updated edition includes in-depth discussions of the most recent developments in international trade jurisprudence, setting out important precedents that help establish the boundaries between global trade rules and domestic national autonomy. In this era, when political developments place even more importance on international trade, it will be essential reading for all students, scholars and practitioners in the field.

In Johannesburg at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, over one hundred and eighty states assumed a collective responsibility to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development economic development, social development, an environmental protection at the local, national, regional and global levels. This remarkable collection of papers, sponsored by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), demonstrates that sustainable development serves as a unifying concept with the potential to facilitate much-needed respect for international law and timely implementation of diverse and overlapping international commitments. It builds on the substance of a rich and complex debate at the intersections among economic, social, and environmental law, bringing together a broad cross-section of viewpoints and voices. The authors review recent developments in WTO discussions and negotiations, and in the recent decisions of the WTO Appellate Body, from a sustainable development law perspective. They also survey relevant new developments in trade and economic agreements at regional, inter-regional and bi-lateral levels. The various essays focus on sustainable development aspects of key issues in recent trade negotiations such as the Singapore Issues (investment, competition, trade facilitation, and government procurement), intellectual property rights, investment arbitration and the linkage between the WTO and multilateral environmental accords, (MEAand¿s).. Among the specific topics covered are the following: Emerging areas of law and policy in trade and sustainable development, The underlying development agendas in global trade law negotiations, Cooperation and potential negotiation on international competition law, Sustainable development aspects of intellectual property rights negotiations, Overlaps between multilateral environmental accords (MEAand¿s) and the WTO, Recent developments in WTO dispute settlement procedures and proceedings, Human rights and environmental opportunities from trade liberalisation and increased market acces, Human rights and environment impact assessment techniques used to analyse trade agreements, Recent developments in bi-lateral and regional trade agreements. Trade, investment, and competition law practitioners and negotiators in developed and developing countries will find this book of great value, as will development and environment law professionals with responsibility for trade and WTO law related matters. With rich contributions from leading trade law practitioners, academics, and WTO panel and appellate body roster members, Sustainable Developments in World Trade Law offers a constructive, timely and accessible expert analysis of recent discussions and advances in the field, providing an integrated and essential guide to some of the most important issues in international economic law today.

An exploration of the current state of global trade law in the era of Big Data and AI. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement covers international commerce in goods and services including measures that directly affect trade, such as import tariffs and quotas, and almost any type of internal measure with an impact on trade. Legal and Economic Principles of World Trade Law contributes to the analysis of the texts of World Trade Law in law and economics, reporting work done to identify improvements to the interpretation of the Agreement. It starts with background studies, the first summarizes The Genesis of the GATT, which highlights the negotiating history of the GATT 1947–8; the second introduces the economics of trade agreements. These are followed by two main studies. The first, authored by Bagwell, Staiger and Sykes, discusses legal and economic aspects of the GATT regulation of border policy instruments, such as import tariffs and import quotas. The second, written by Grossman, Horn and Mavroidis, focuses on the core provision for the regulation of domestic policy instruments - the National Treatment principles in Art. III GATT.

The rise of economic liberalism in the latter stages of the 20th century coincided with a fundamental transformation of international economic governance, especially through the law of the World Trade Organization. In this book, Andrew Lang provides a new account of this transformation, and considers its enduring implications for international law. Against the commonly-held idea that 'neoliberal' policy prescriptions were encoded into WTO law, Lang argues that the last decades of the 20th century saw a reinvention of the international trade regime, and a reconstitution of its internal structures of knowledge. In addition, the book explores the way that resistance to economic liberalism was expressed and articulated over the same period in other areas of international law, most prominently international human rights law. It considers the promise and limitations of this form of 'inter-regime' contestation, arguing that measures to ensure greater collaboration and cooperation between regimes may fail in their objectives if they are not accompanied by a simultaneous destabilization of each regime's structures of knowledge and characteristic features. With that in mind, the book contributes to a full and productive contestation of the nature and purpose of global economic governance.

Since its foundation in 1995, the World Trade Organization, with its extensive legal provisions, has been defining the world trade relations and also had an enormous impact on both European and national economic law. At the same time, the WTO is perceived within the political discussion as a symbol for the world trade relations as a whole, the challenges of globalization and justice of the world trade order. Due to the expansion, consolidation and the increased enforcement of its rules, the relevance of the World Trade Organization will continue to increase. This book describes the institutional system, the basic principles and the vast variety of rules of the World Trade Organization. It aims at clarifying the structures and the general concepts, in order to enable the reader to get a better understanding of the issues at stake in many of the discussions and controversies on world trade.

This concise and reader-friendly overview of WTO law is essential reading for anyone needing an introduction to this complex field.

World trade and investment law is in crisis: new and progressive ideas are needed. Rules that facilitated globalization and supported global economic growth are being challenged. A system of global governance that once seemed secure is now at risk as the United States ignores the rules while developing countries struggle to escape restrictions. Some want to tear global institutions and agreements down while others try desperately to maintain the status quo. Rejecting both options, a group of trade and investment law experts from 10 countries, South and North, have joined hands to propose ideas for a new world trade and investment law that would maintain global growth while distributing costs and benefi ts more fairly. Paying special attention to those who have suffered from trade dislocation and to restrictions that have hampered innovative growth strategies in developing countries, they outline a progressive trade and investment law agenda in World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined.