International Economic Law in Transition from Trade Liberalization to Trade Regulation

Abstract

Oppenheim’s International Law, published in its 9th edition in 1996, and one of the authorities of post-war international law, briefly discusses the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) at the very end of the second volume, dealing with the concept of Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN).1 Other books at the time and even more recently would not mention GATT and international trade as one of the chapters and canons of public international law, or merely discuss it briefly2—despite the eminent role of trade in forming stages of international law in the 18th and 19th Century, together with the emerging law of the sea. Trade simply was not on the radar screen of international legal scholarship in the first part of the 20th Century. Obviously, after World War II and the new age of the United Nations, taxes and tariffs could not match the attractiveness, and importance of the emerging areas of decolonization and development, of human rights or environmental law.3 Ever since, things have changed. International trade very much is on the screen, and international economic law as a proper discipline considerably grew in stature (albeit most of public international law always had a strong connotation to economic interests and affairs). Trade- and world Trade organization (WTO)-related topics have become frequent subject in public international law journals of general coverage. Again, we witness what Wolfgang Friedman in 1964 called the changing structure of international when at the time a new emphasis on international cooperation emerged under the law of the United Nations.4 I recall these developments for two reasons.