This new edition of my 2000 book incorporates and evaluates the experience with the implementation and revision of the WTO agreements. I have decided to keep to the format of the original edition and integrate the new material. Because of the impasse in new trade negotiations, nothing radical has happened to the agreements recently. Yet there has been a huge amount of consolidation, refinement and reconsideration, so much so that it was quite daunting at times to encompass the field, and select the key aspects.

This experience means that the dispute settlement system now plays a bigger part in the construction of WTO law than it did when I was writing up the first edition in 1998. So it receives close examination here, but along with the other interesting experiments in WTO decision making such as the TRIPs system for trade in medicines under compulsory licence and the GATS work on disciplines for domestic regulation. It would have been easiest to stay with these institutional developments but I have also persisted with the three detailed case studies. The aim is to show, I hope, that the WTO still has challenges to face and choices to make if it is to accommodate alternative producer claims and support international business regulation.

Also regarding the format, I should note that I have retained quite a few of the ‘old’ references because they represent the formative context at the imaginative, innovative time the agreements were fashioned and the members embarked on implementation.