The GATT, born as a provisional agreement, developed into a de facto organization whose rules governed most of the trade in goods for decades. It remained, however, characterized by mostly sketchy substantive provisions and a weak institutional setting, as well as by ineffective mechanisms to ensure respect for the obligations undertaken by its contracting parties. Its ‘sudden transformation’ at the end of the Uruguay Round into the World Trade Organization (WTO), a rules-based multilateral organization, featuring as a key element a robust law-based dispute settlement system represented a puzzling ‘mutation’ in the approach to the regulation of world trade.

A system which had valued a pragmatic and anti-legalistic approach by government representatives, negotiators, and staff as to the development of trade rules and the management of disputes was replaced by a contrary approach, advocating clarity of rules and their independent interpretation and application as the basis for the predictability and stability of the global trading system. This change has unexpectedly converted the WTO into a model among international sub-systems, showing how legalization and judicialization can ensure both efficiency and fairness in the application of the obligations to all members.

The enhanced role of lawyers is, at the same time, at the root and a result of this radical evolution. This book is all about this change, demonstrating that the change was neither as swift nor as radical as many believe. This is because, as the chapters focusing on the early history show, lawyers had made their entry into the GATT Secretariat, albeit in modest positions, since the early 1980s, so their influence has been quietly making itself felt since then. Still, many Uruguay Round negotiators had warned against the dangers of a system in which lawyers rather than trade diplomats and experts would ‘run the show’. Indeed, as Gabrielle Marceau, Amelia Porges, and Daniel Ari Baker recall in the ‘Introduction and overview’ chapter, comprising of 60 pages, many of the peculiar and innovative legal features of the WTO stem from the distrust of many negotiators in lawyers and ‘legal courts’. This includes the establishment of the ‘hybrid’ Appellate Body and the retention of the panel system in the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). Accordingly, negotiators discarded the idea of giving the competence on disputes between members to a regular court, as is the case for the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a specialized organization of the United Nations family. At the same time, they opted for a law-based structure as the most solid basis to overcome the shortcomings of the GATT.

This impressive volume uncovers, as has never been done before, the arcane aspects of this transformation, dispelling at the same time some false ideas as to the role of law in the evolution of the GATT, a role that was far from negligible in its final years, as several contributors explain. On this basis, the authors of the Introduction take the view that the WTO is not the result of a mutation, but rather of a transformation of the GATT, a process in which the lawyers of the Secretariat were fully engaged as advisers and drafters. As underlined by the WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo in his foreword, ‘this book paints an interesting and sometimes surprising portrait of the evolution of the role that law and lawyers have played throughout the history of the multilateral trading system’.

The origin of this book explains its unique features and its special value in setting forth, for the first time and from a number of aspects, the role of law and lawyers from the GATT to the WTO, and hence in the drafting of the various agreements and in the daily operations of the WTO, including, of course, the Dispute Settlement System (DSS). In fact, this volume stems from a conference organized at the WTO in Geneva in 2012 by the WTO Legal Affairs Division (LAD) to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of its antecedent, the GATT's Office of Legal Affairs. This Office was established by the then Director-General Arthur Dunkel as an independent office as recently as 1981, thus sometime after the conclusion of the Tokyo Round (in 1979), and initially just ‘for a two-year trial period‘(!).

The crucial importance of the LAD within the WTO is sometimes overlooked, but this is plainly wrong if one considers that the LAD assists and supports most panels in their work, from research and procedure (including their composition) to counseling and drafting, besides assisting the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) itself. May be it is the establishment of the Appellate Body, endowed with a separate Secretariat of its own, that has in part overshadowed the role of the LAD. The thirtieth anniversary conference and the subsequent publication of this book may be thus considered a vindication of the ‘other WTO lawyers’ historical role and present function.

The second feature that makes this book truly unique is that it contains contributions from practically all the legal officers who have held the key legal positions or have held other legal roles within the GATT from the outset in 1981 to the WTO at present. There will be indeed no further chance to hold in one's hand, collected in a single volume, the reflections and personal recollections of figures such as the little-known Hielke van Tuinen, who was the first GATT lawyer in 1981–1982 when the office was made up of just himself and a secretary; followed by Frieder Roessler, Ake Linden, Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, Amelia Porges, Petros Mavroidis, and Gabrielle Marceau herself. With them are other well-known lawyers who lived through the transition from the GATT to the WTO, or have headed, or have been active in the LAD thereafter: among others, Bill Davey, Pieter Jan Kuijper, Bruce Wilson, Valerie Hughes, Reto Malacrida, Yves Renouf. Thus, no lawyer has been left out of those who have marked the history of the GATT and the WTO; names that are familiar to anyone dealing with the WTO from a legal perspective or to those interested or involved in the settlement of trade disputes.

It was a deliberate choice of those who have worked on this project that the publication would include only ‘insiders’. This includes not only lawyers who have worked in the LAD but also legal staff of the Rules Division (though the strange historical partition of legal tasks between this Division and LAD remains obscure), members of the Secretariat in other capacities, Deputy Director-Generals, members of the Appellate Body Secretariat, and some Appellate Body Members. This has enabled Gabrielle Marceau and her contributors to produce a book that is not ‘parochial’ but, on the contrary, offers a plurality of views and recollections of the roles that lawyers have had in shaping the GATT/WTO system and how they contribute at present. Among the 43 contributors I would especially like to highlight, in addition to those mentioned above, are those who have had a role in the Appellate Body, such as Debra Steger (the first director), Alan Yanovich, and Kaarlo Castren in the Secretariat as well as former colleagues of mine, some of whom I consider also as my mentors in my work there: Jennifer Hillman, David Unterhalter, Julio Lacarte-Muro, James Bacchus, Avi Ganesan, Mitsuo Matshushita, Luiz Olavo Baptista, Yuejiao Zhang, and Ricardo Ramirez (in the order in which their contributions appear in the book).

It would be impossible to enter into the details of individual contributions without exceeding the dimension of a book review and would do injustice to those not mentioned. Nevertheless, the titles of the various parts of the volume give an idea of the systematic manner in which the contributions are set forth and in which the subject matter is arranged. This arrangement reflects the second part of the title of the book, namely, ‘The development of the rule of law in the multilateral trading system’.

Part I, ‘The role of law and lawyers in the GATT system 1948–92’ is subdivided into two sections, the first focusing on the origins (‘Infancy: reflections on the origins of legalization in the GATT’). The second section highlights the breakthrough following the Tokyo Round and the addition to the GATT of a number of separate agreements. This section ‘Childhood: the Tokyo Round and the establishment and work of the first legal office’ stresses the obstacles that the lawyers involved encountered when affirming (the usefulness of) their role and of law in general within GATT.

Part II, ‘Legal work relating to the entry into force of the WTO: 1993–95’ , is also divided into two sections: first ‘Adolescence: transition from the GATT to the WTO’, followed by ‘Young adult: the WTO as a formal international organization’, focusing on the role of the LAD with respect to panel composition and its operation. Reto Malacrida, who has been part of the LAD since 1999, highlights in his piece (‘WTO panel composition: searching far and wide for administrators of world trade justice’) what is generally a mysterious step: the difficult and sensitive role the Secretariat has in coming up with candidates for panels who satisfy the explicit and implicit requirements of nationality, independence, competence, and experience, and who may also be acceptable to the parties. As to why governmental panelists are so dominant, William Davey gives an answer in his contribution, where he recalls the statement of a delegate: ‘With all due respect to prof. Davey we don't want any academics on the panel’ (p. 372).

Alan Yanovich, who recently left the Appellate Body Secretariat for private practice, reflects on the role of outside lawyers and law firms (‘the specialized trade bar’) in dispute settlement as ‘an important linkage between the WTO and the business community’. He raises also a relevant untold issue: that the dispute settlement service is provided free of charge, so that ‘there is clearly a disconnect between the level of activity of the WTO dispute settlement system and its funding mechanism’. How much longer will the unwillingness of WTO members to provide more resources be compatible with an efficient DSS? What about the adequacy of legal assistance instruments that help developing countries deal with the growing number of disputes and the greater legal complexity of issues?

In Part III, ‘The changing legal character of the multilateral trading system: 1996–today’, the first section ‘Adulthood: the quasi-judicialization of the panel process by the Legal Affairs Division and the Rules Division’ is opened by the paper of William Davey, ‘The first years of WTO dispute settlement: dealing with controversy and building confidence’. Davey gives a first-hand account of how new procedural and organizational issues were dealt with and ultimately resolved when the new WTO framework faced complex and prolonged disputes such as EC–Bananas, US–FSC, and EC–Hormones. Dealing with the new appeal mechanism was a challenge for the LAD and the panels themselves, but the panels (and the LAD) ultimately adapted to the more detailed systematic reasoning that the Appellate Body required, including the unexpected reference to dictionaries and the systematic resort to the interpretative criteria of the Vienna Convention. Davey recalls the dismay that hit panel members, after the first reversals by the newly established Appellate Body, to the point that ‘the Appellate Body's tone in some of the early cases did make some experienced panelists less willing to serve’.

The second section of Part III is devoted to the role and operating of the Appellate Body, a subject matter that was left out from the conference of 2012, but which adds completeness to the book by its inclusion here. This section, ‘Gaining maturity: the Appellate Body and the impact of the appellate review on the development of international trade law’, features the contributions of eight Appellate Body members, from the first generation of the founders to many current members. It is worth reading the recollection by Jim Bacchus in his piece ‘Not in clinical isolation’ and how this celebrated expression made its way into the first Appellate Body report, burying once for all the widely held view that ‘GATT law was practical and workable and self-contained’, a realm separate from ‘international law … something vague and messy and applicable somewhere else’.

Part IV ‘Looking ahead: new challenges and opportunities’ is left to contributors who are not part of the LAD. Former DDG Alejandro Jara and current DDG Karl Brauner reflect on the evolution (rather than revolution, in their view) that marked the transition from the GATT to the WTO, the current role of the LAD (which serves the organization well beyond the needs of the DSS), and the growth of the legal staff through professionalism and specialization. Ricardo Ramírez, then chairman of the Appellate Body, and and Kaarlo Castren of its Secretariat, address frankly the pressing issue of whether the increase in the workload will undermine the adjudicatory process and how to resolve this challenge.

The book concludes thus with the proposition that the GATT/WTO has become an adult and has reached maturity: at thirty, it is not appropriate to look beyond. Nor does the book address issues outside the legal sectors of the WTO, such as the current difficulties in the global negotiations and the prospects for plurilateral agreements. The challenges from the outside, such as regional trade arrangements (the ‘step children’ of the global system, to continue the metaphor of human life as used in the titles of the chapters of the book) are also beyond the scope of the book.

The real conclusion is found not at the end of the book, but rather in the Preface by the editor, Gabrielle Marceau, who cannot be commended enough for having put together such a unique, high-quality, and indispensible work for all those interested in trade governance, the WTO, and international dispute settlement in general. As she states, ‘this book suggests that the rule of law, at least as manifest in the GATT and WTO Secretariats, is not solely concerned with legal formalism and respect for agreed norms, but also includes day-to-day work that emphasizes the importance of equality, fairness and transparency … I hope that the commitment to the rule of law that so many of the books contributors identify as fundamental to the GATT/WTO system will continue to inspire and guide us.’

As highlighted by former Appellate Body member Jennifer Hillman in her introductory paper, ‘Moving towards an international rule of law? The role of the GATT and the WTO in its development’, inspiration from the rule of law, and the principles of an independent judiciary, equal access, transparency, separation of power, and compliance that informs the functioning of the administrative and judicial activities of the WTO, could also assist its Members in the path towards enacting certain necessary changes and additions. These changes should be based on the existing agreements and should improve the role of the organization by rebalancing its various functions, not by weakening the adjudicative branch, but rather by strengthening the rule-making function.

An additional conclusion can be drawn as one reflects on the totality of the contributions that form this cohesive volume (not to forget the many pictures of key moments and key figures of the WTO's history, most of them of course lawyers, from 1947 to 2014): the importance of a dedicated competent legal staff, both administrative and adjudicatory, through years and decades, continuity and transformation, to shape an organization and an international legal system. The WTO is a living institution, thanks specifically to the body of its lawyers, in their various capacities, past and present, as a kind of an extended family. The book makes it clear that without their engagement – even once retired, as evidenced by the contributions to this volume by many ‘historical’ but still active figures – the existence and consolidation of this institution, a key feature of today's international panorama, would not have been possible.