Among my dearest memories of John Jackson and his wife Joan are the four weeks spent in Ann Arbor as a guest lecturer at the Michigan Law School in the mid-nineties, briefly after the entry into force of the WTO package of agreements. It was great to be away for some weeks from the relentless pressure of work in the WTO group in the Legal Service of the European Commission, which I was heading at the time. I taught a seminar on EC external relations, but also sat in on John's lectures on international trade law and naturally our discussions centered on the WTO and how the new dispute settlement system was going to work.

John Jackson's long, fruitful association with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was unique in the annals of international organizations. His 1969 book, World Trade and the Law of GATT, became the Baedeker for government officials, practitioners, and academics seeking an overall understanding of the trading system or an explanation of a particular GATT provision. Yet the uniqueness of Jackson's relationship to the GATT was not just his foundational scholarship; every international organization in the twentieth century spawned a scholarly community. The uniqueness came from his role as a teacher attracting graduate law students from around the world who traveled to Ann Arbor to study with him and then returned to their countries to take on leadership roles in international trade. These decades of students inspired by Jackson and educated by his synoptic understanding of trade law enhanced Jackson's influence on the GATT in a way that has no parallel in other agencies.

John Jackson bestrode the world of international trade law like a Colossus. His 1969 treatise on World Trade and the Law of GATT was called the bible of GATT law. His 1977 casebook on Legal Problems of International Economic Relations created a new law school course and introduced thousands of students around the globe to international trade law. It was the leading international trade law casebook for decades, and his students went on to positions of responsibility throughout the world in governments, international organizations, and private practice. His analysis of GATT infirmities convinced certain influential governments to push for a new international trade organization, which eventually saw life as the World Trade Organization. It was a great honor for me to have been associated with John for over thirty years. Indeed, his 1985 invitation to join as a co-author of the casebook after my first year in law teaching undoubtedly saved me many years of drudgery as a corporate/securities law scholar. Thus, I am pleased to offer some thoughts on John's influence on dispute settlement under GATT and the WTO.

I first came to know John Jackson in his role as a consultant to the international trade group at Arnold & Porter. Fresh out of law school and a novice in the field of international trade law, I quickly learned that John was the leading American expert on legal aspects of both GATT and domestic trade law issues. Only later did I come to realize that his stature in this regard was global. John's advice on GATT issues was sought after by academics and policymakers everywhere.

John Jackson pioneered international trade law, helped to establish the WTO, and taught legions of professors and trade policy officials who continue to promote his goals of a multilateral trading system based on the rule of law, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. A great man, he was also a very dear man – humble, quiet, unassuming, kind, and private. In his writings, he had the unique ability to distill very complex issues down to a few, readily comprehensible paragraphs for students and readers.

Before and after World War II, trade policy was largely dealt with, and shaped by, the communities of government economists and diplomats. Lawyers were hardly involved or in the lead. John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White coined the Bretton Woods institutions. Clair Wilcox was instrumental in creating the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and Joseph Viner influential in the early years of the GATT. All were economists. Harry L. Hopkins, the father of New Deal and senior adviser to President Roosevelt, entered social work and government after college. In 1944, he coined the adage, expressing the philosophy of international cooperation, which would influence subsequent generations and legal developments so strongly: ‘Trade conflict breeds non-cooperation, suspicion, bitterness. Nations which are economic enemies are not likely to remain political friends for long.’

I'm told that John Jackson was the world's foremost scholar on the law of international trade policy and institutions. Since all that I know of trade law I learned from John, I can only trust the opinions of others on that. But I know that John had an excellent understanding of, and appreciation for, the economics of international trade. And he put those together in both his writings and his advice to policymakers, through which he had a profound influence on the development of the institutions of trade policy that we enjoy today.

John Jackson was one of the giants in trade law, with Robert Hudec (who died some years ago) as his equal, though their abilities and interests nicely complemented each other. They both were read with profit, along with other luminaries such as Michael Trebilcock of Toronto, by economists such as myself. They also inspired modern trade-law stars such as my colleagues Petros Mavroidis, David Leebron at Rice, and Alan Sykes at Stanford.

John H. Jackson was indeed a great scholar in the field of international economic law. My association with John lasted for almost 40 years and he was one of my closest friends. There are many personal memories of him and I will mention only a few of them.

My father, John Howard Jackson, was a life-long advocate for strengthening a rules-based trading system. While he recognized the importance of developing a predictable, transparent economic system, the larger goal in his view was to contribute to creating conditions for world peace. He argued for a system that would favour co-operation in situations where domestic policy-makers might otherwise make decisions that would have negative spill-over effects on their trading partners. At the same time, he recognized the tension between the need to have rules conducive to stability and predictability and the need to allow official discretion to address targeted problems. The challenge of crafting institutions that could effectively manage this tension captured his attention throughout his career.

When establishing whether a disputed regulation is protectionist under the WTO National Treatment Principle, there are two key elements: its effect on the market for competitive products, and its intent or policy rationale. Yet the Appellate Body has formally rejected both elements, and in the surprising 2014 outcome of EC–Seal Products, under the key provision GATT Article III(4), the latter was simply denied. This obfuscation leads to implicit and explicit conflation of these elements. In some disputes, qualitative findings about the existence and nature of competitive relationships are presented using the language of quantitative market analysis. In others, compelling policy objectives shape the outcome of a supposedly market-based analysis. This article proposes an approach that synthesizes two strands of scholarship, advocating more rigorous use of market-based evidence and stronger analysis of policy rationale. Separating these elements will achieve the appropriate balance between them and lead to greater transparency in dispute outcomes.

We use new data on trade and production in 167 countries to infer estimates of trade costs for manufactured goods and agriculture for 1996‒2010. Trade costs are strongly declining in country income level. Among developing countries, only the upper middle income group has been successful in reducing trade costs faster than elsewhere in the world. Sub-Saharan African countries and low income countries remain subject to very high trade costs. Regional trade agreements, maritime transport connectivity, and trade facilitation performance are important determinants of trade costs.

Under the prevailing WTO jurisprudence, the mandatory/discretionary distinction is applied to Article 1.1(b) of the SCM Agreement whenever a Member's measure is challenged ‘as such’ pursuant to the SCM Agreement. However, applying the mandatory/discretionary distinction vis-à-vis Article 1.1(b) may render the entire SCM Agreement vulnerable against certain subsidies designed to confer benefits systematically through private intermediaries. In order to prevent such vulnerability, Article 1.1(b) of the SCM Agreement should be construed to cover benefits conferred as consequences of underlying financial contributions, without being limited by the mandatory/discretionary distinction.

The article discusses circumvention and anti-circumvention in international trade with a focus on Australia's anti-circumvention mechanism and in particular the first anti-circumvention investigation in Australia. It identifies the major issues relating to circumvention and anti-circumvention in the GATT/WTO negotiations which have led to the failure of WTO members to conclude uniform rules on anti-circumvention. The article argues that multilateral anti-circumvention rules are necessary to standardize national anti-circumvention laws and practice and discipline unilateral use of anti-circumvention measures. The article further argues that Australia's anti-circumvention law and practice, as reflected in its first anti-circumvention investigation, may have violated WTO rules and is likely to lead to increasing protectionism to cost of WTO members and Australia's FTA trading partners. Australia's unjustified use of anti-circumvention measures is unlikely to foster the development of its import-competing industries and may provoke retaliation by other countries.

This compliance proceeding under Article 21.5 of the DSU concerned measures taken by the United States to implement the recommendations and rulings of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) in US–Tuna II (Mexico). In US–Tuna II (Mexico), the DSB found that certain US measures concerning the importation, marketing, and sale of tuna products (taken together, the Original Tuna Measure) were inconsistent with the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (the TBT Agreement). The Original Tuna Measure, inter alia, contained conditions under which tuna products could be labelled ‘dolphin safe’. The United States' measure taken to comply with the recommendations and rulings of the DSB consisted of an amendment to the Original Tuna Measure (the 2013 Final Rule). The Appellate Body generally referred to the Original Tuna Measure, together with the 2013 Final Rule, as the Amended Tuna Measure. The Amended Tuna Measure was the focus of this compliance proceeding.

On 29 May 2015, the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) adopted the Article 21.5 Appellate Body reports in these disputes, and the reports of the compliance panel as modified by the Appellate Body. The findings adopted by the DSB were that the United States' amended country of origin labelling (COOL) requirements violated Article 2.1 of the TBT Agreement and Article III:4 of the GATT 1994 because they continued to accord less favourable treatment to imported livestock than to like domestic livestock. Thereafter, Canada and Mexico both filed requests with the DSB for authorization to suspend concessions or other obligations under Article 22.2 of the DSU. Canada and Mexico sought authorization to suspend concessions and related obligations in the goods sector under the GATT 1994 to an annual value of CAD3.068 billion and USD713 million, respectively. The mandate of the Arbitrator in these proceedings was to ‘determine whether the level of such [proposed] suspension is equivalent to the level of nullification or impairment' to Canada and Mexico.

In İçkale İnşaat Limited Şirketi v. Turkmenistan, the investment arbitral tribunal's majority issued an award in March 2016, under the Turkmenistan–Turkey Bilateral Investment Treaty (the BIT), dismissing all of the claimant's claims in their entirety.

The award in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) case Ping An v. Belgium was dispatched to the parties on 30 April 2015. The case is of significance for a variety of reasons. To start with, it is the first time that Chinese investors instituted arbitration proceedings under the ICSID rules. Furthermore, it is the first time that Belgium is cited as the respondent in an international investment case.