John Jackson’s Legacy: Defining a Field

Abstract

John Jackson belongs in that small set of legal academics whose intellectual contribution is best described not by a single idea or article, but by defining a subject area, in John’s case international trade law. That accomplishment is rare enough that it is worth additional examination. This reflection focuses on three key moments of his half-century scholarly career: the beginning period in the 1960s when he locked-in on an area of international interactions mostly ignored by the legal academy; the time leading up to the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations in the 1990s that transformed the world’s institutional structure for dealing with trade in ways that reflected John’s rules-oriented approach to international relations; and the most recent period, illustrating John’s lifelong curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, as he extended his study into other areas of international economic relationships including environment and financial regulation.