When I was invited in May 2001 to deliver the annual international law lecture series at the Cambridge University Lauterpacht Research Centre in November 2002, I was honored and also challenged to pursue further some thinking and writing about the interrelationship of international law and international economic law which I had already begun.

Little did I then realize, however, how complex and elaborate a preoccupation this task would be. At the time of the invitation, the events of September 11, 2001, had not yet occurred, and those events suddenly created an eruption of thinking and writing about general international law and its meaning for twenty-first-century international relations.

By the time I had prepared the lectures, it was apparent to me that there were added dimensions to the landscape which required exploration. The intellectual journey became longer, more perilous, and yet more interesting. The book is therefore substantially longer than the lectures, but still pursues the goal of being relatively compact.

Chapter 1 sets forth the overall logical structure of the book, and outlines the roadmap for the intellectual journey it represents, so that these need not be repeated here. However, a few general remarks may alert the reader to certain features of this book. For example, it is not designed to be a complete text on its subjects (international law and international economic law as represented by the World Trade Organization).