There are various textbooks and casebooks on WTO law. This course recommends the purchase of at least one of the textbooks noted below, but it does not rely on either exclusively. The casebooks also contain some helpful material, but, again, the course does not rely on these.

The course will be taught on the basis of weekly handouts with reading lists. These will be divided into mandatory reading and recommended reading. The mandatory reading will be mainly primary materials in the form of treaty texts, subsidiary WTO instruments and dispute settlement reports (ie the cases). It is essential to bring these materials to class. The treaty texts are collected in The Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations: The Legal Texts (any edition) and it is essential to purchase this book and bring this to class. This book may also be taken into the final exam.

Other materials, and in particular, dispute settlement reports, are not readily available and must be printed out and brought to class. These can be lengthy. Unfortunately the Law Faculty is unable to subsidise printing costs. The materials listed as ‘recommended reading’ do not need to be brought to class.

Textbooks

Matsushita et al, The World Trade Organization (2nd ed 2006)
Trebilcock and Howse, The Regulation of International Trade (3rd ed 2005)

Casebooks

Van den Bossche, The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization (2nd ed 2008)
Lester and Mercurio, World Trade Law (2008)

The policy and economics of international trade

This course is not an economics or trade policy course. However, a basic understanding of these matters will greatly assist in understanding WTO law. Some useful and readable books, taking an orthodox line, are:

Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (2nd ed 2007)
Irwin, Free Trade Under Fire (3rd ed 2009)
Irwin, Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade (1996)
Krugman, Pop Internationalism (1996)

Some more critical books are

Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity (2007)
Unger, Free Trade Reimagined (2007) and also available at http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s_8473.pdf

There are numerous other books on globalization, but many of these tend not to focus on free trade, as such, or do not do so as well as the books listed above. One focusing on development issues is:

Stiglitz and Charlton, Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development (2007)

A fairly lively book on the Doha negotiations is

Blustein, Misadventures of the Most Favoured Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System (2009)

Online materials

A great deal of material is available online. Most important is the WTO website: www.wto.org and its documents database at http://docsonline.wto.org. Another useful site for primary material and commentary is www.worldtradelaw.net, and the blog on this site is a useful source for identifying current disputes in the field of international trade. There are also numerous NGOs with useful information, including the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (www.ictsd.org), which has a weekly newsletter (Bridges) covering recent developments, and the South Centre (www.southcentre.org).