Former Appellate Body Member Merit E. Janow and her co-editors have put together a truly impressive volume marking the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Organization. The book makes a major contribution to the literature that is notable for its comprehensive treatment of the subject matter, diversity and richness of views, and, most significantly, the reputations of its contributing authors. The essays comprising this volume were prepared for the ‘WTO at Ten’ conference sponsored and financially supported by Columbia University and a number of its schools, centers, and institutes, along with the WTO's Appellate Body, in 2006. The authors include journalists, lawyers, economists, public officials of governments and the WTO, academics, and many who fall into more than one of these categories, almost all world leaders in the field. A former president (Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico), several former US Trade Representatives, European Communities Trade Commissioners and eight current or former members of the Appellate Body are among the authors and commentators. In the aggregate, the contributors are a most impressive group, most of whom have spent their careers as international trade policy makers, negotiators, and scholars.

Few of those familiar with the field of international trade would question the parallel assertions in the introductory comments of Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger and Professor Janow that international trade ‘is as fundamental today as a core legal field as constitutional law was to an earlier period’ (pp. xxx and xi). Almost anyone with a significant interest in international trade will find this volume useful whether she is a novice attorney, economist or government official seeking to learn the history and operations of the WTO, or an expert seeking to expand her understanding in a particular area or areas. Even if a reader has already studied the questions raised and formed her own conclusions, it is always interesting and thought-provoking to appreciate how the leaders in the field are analyzing relevant issues.

The 1,100 page volume is divided into two major parts and 11 sections with a total of 51 chapters. Part II deals with the WTO's dispute settlement system; Part I, entitled ‘Understanding the World Trade Organization Today and its History’ deals with the remaining subject matter. The 11 sub-headings illustrate the broad scope of the work:

• • The World Trade Organization: The Challenges Ahead

• • The Uruguay Round and the Doha Development Agenda: What Have We Achieved?

• • The World Trade Organization and Developing Countries

• • Decision-Making in the World Trade Organization: An Analysis of a Member-driven Organization

• • Reflections on the World Trade Organization in the Context of Economic Globalization

• • Examining the Dispute Settlement System: How Has It Performed?

• • WTO Case Law in the International Law Context

• • The Dispute Settlement System in the Next Ten Years

• • Implementation of WTO Rulings: The Role of the Courts and Legislatures in the United States and Other Jurisdictions.

Among the volume's most effective features is a successful effort to relate the past to current affairs and both to the future. For example, in the section on the Doha Development Round the contributors discuss the relevance of the previous Uruguay Round (where the talks were also stalled for several years) to the Doha Round and then predict the impact of the Doha Round negotiations (success or failure) on future global trade negotiations. For obvious reasons, the clear focus in this key section is whether the Doha Round can be concluded successfully and, if not, the consequences for the world trading system. The diversity of approaches is reflected in the assessments of the Doha Round and its chances for success at a time when the negotiations had virtually stalled but had not been abandoned. At least one author, Professor Albert Fishlow, seemed ready to admit that Doha is a failure and move on. Two others, former US Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter and Professor Arvind Panagariya, are (or were) much more optimistic about the chances of a successful conclusion. Others such as former US Trade Representative Carla Hills expressed views that were somewhere between the two extremes.

Another of the book's useful features is the inclusion in each sector of a panel discussion or roundtable in which the authors (and other experts) engage in a sometimes lively dialogue. These roundtables have facilitated interchanges among authors and commentators and have frequently provided different or additional perspectives.

Governance, including the conduct of trade negotiations, and dispute settlement dominate the volume as seems appropriate given the challenges the WTO faces in both of those areas. The WTO and developing countries is third in the list of three major themes, occupying only about 65 pages of the total, although questions of major importance to developing countries are discussed briefly in the sections on the Doha Round (given the ‘Doha Development Agenda’ label) and those relating to the Dispute Settlement Body as well. The WTO and developing countries section addresses challenges such as how the world trading system might better support the development objectives of low-income countries and the alternatives in dealing with ‘reciprocity’ issues in tariff negotiations with poor countries, including the risks of abandoning reciprocity in multilateral trade negotiations.

It is unrealistic to expect, despite its length and breadth, that a volume such as this could be fully comprehensive, even with regard to governance and dispute settlement. Perhaps the only major challenge to the WTO system that is not thoroughly analyzed is the proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs). Although the RTA issues are mentioned in passing in several of the chapters, the volume never addresses squarely the difficulties RTAs present for WTO governance (in terms of enforcing the requirements of GATT Article XXIV), completing the Doha Round (due to the shifting focus for many WTO Members to their RTA negotiations), and in the conflicts between WTO and RTA dispute settlement. More than 380 RTAs were notified to the WTO through mid-2007, and many Members such as Canada, Peru, South Korea, and the European Communities are busy negotiating new accords (WTO, 2008). The lack of RTA discussion in the book is all the more surprising given that several of the authors, Professors Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya (Reference Bhagwati and Panagariya1996), along with Sutherland et al. (Reference Sutherland2005), have been among the most frequent critics of the RTA movement and the perceived threats RTAs pose to the world trading system.

Nor is the book intended to provide comprehensive coverage of the WTO. For example, it deals only at the margins with agricultural trade, services, rules (antidumping and subsidies), intellectual property and the like, to the extent those subjects relate to WTO governance, dispute settlement, and developing countries. Many books discussing WTO law generally are available to those interested in a comprehensive treatment, including the Matsushita et al. treatise (Reference Matsushita, Schoenbaum and Mavroidis2006) and the recent Lester and Mercurio textbook (Reference Lester, Mercurio, Davies and Leitner2008).

Professor Janow's 17 page introductory guide to the book will be helpful to many readers, particularly the novices. The detailed index and list of cases will facilitate use of the volume as a research tool. It is too soon at this writing (July 2008) to assess the accuracy of the authors' predictions of the success or failure of the Doha Round and the implications of such success or failure for the world trading system. Let us hope that Professor Janow and her colleagues will consider a similar conference and book entitled The WTO at Fifteen that will help us to answer those questions, among others!