Although the field of scholars in international economic law has broadened and deepened considerably over the past decade, John Jackson continues to hold sway as the preeminent expert in this subject and for good reason. In this new book, Jackson uses his detailed study of international trade and WTO law as a way of triggering an initial discussion into whether lessons learned empirically through the law of the multilateral trading system can give us guidance on evolving concepts of sovereignty that have broader application.

The book has its origins in a series of lectures Professor Jackson was invited to deliver at the Cambridge University Lauterpacht Research Centre in 2002 and from the text we can divine that the original material was further developed and researched over a period of up to approximately the end of 2005, making the WTO-specific references and cases discussed still relatively recent and up-to-date. Academics and other researchers interested in the sovereignty, international law, and GATT–WTO questions taken up in the book are well-served by the extensive (81 pages) separate notes section that follows the main text and which provides not only important and complete citations for further reference but also a considerable amount of supplementary commentary by the author and his research assistants that would be distracting for the reader if contained in the main text of the book. Overall, it is intended to be a thought-provoking work. As the author states three or four times, the book ‘is more about queries than theories’ and is intended to stimulate more thinking on an important topic that will require a considerable amount of additional investigation into complex relationships that are changing frequently in today's evolving globalized world.

The book is divided into three main parts. These sections take up in turn: (a) traditional (Westphalian) concepts of sovereignty and an exploration of the criticism of those concepts in the modern-day world; (b) the WTO and its role – primarily through dispute settlement activity – in helping to elaborate new legal relationships between and among nation states and also the relationship between what Jackson calls ‘international law’ (IL) and ‘international economic law’ (IEL); and, (c) approaches to analysis of sovereignty/IL questions as well as actual examples (in WTO and elsewhere, including investment, health questions, and the use of force in a UN context). In the book's final chapter, Professor Jackson begins what he himself characterizes as just the start of an analysis into which concepts and models of sovereignty might remain valid in today's world, how IL is being modified by what the author calls ‘sovereignty modern’ as well as how IL and IEL are interacting to change traditional concepts and the challenges that remain ahead of us in this complex area of study.

As a non-lawyer, I am not comfortable using this review to comment on Jackson's treatment of the basic sovereignty and IL concepts he addresses in the book. I will venture to suggest that his discussion of these issues is cogent and relatively easy for anyone interested in the topic to comprehend. As an expert in trade negotiations, what I will do instead is to focus on those parts of the book that relate to the WTO and how its negotiated agreements and dispute settlement developments have contributed to the central theme of the book.

Chapters 4 and 5 – which together make up some 120 pages of the book – are devoted to the World Trade Organization and its dispute settlement system. Even if readers had no interest in the sovereignty and international law questions dealt with in the book, they would find this section very useful in explaining how the GATT and WTO came into being and the pros and cons of the system as it has developed over the years. The reader will learn how Eric Wyndham White engineered the modern ‘panel’ process of dispute settlement in 1955 and how the concepts of ‘violation’ versus ‘non-violation’ nullification and impairment developed through real cases in dispute settlement. In a relatively succinct presentation, we see how GATT and WTO jurisprudence developed over time and how institutions and institutional questions, such as decision-making models affect the system. Chapter 5 is particularly important as the author singles out several key cases of WTO dispute settlement and discusses the contribution each of these key cases makes to the development of WTO precedent and IEL. Jackson's discussion of the ‘Superfund’ and ‘Shrimp–Turtle’ dispute settlement cases is particularly interesting as even experts in WTO law might not appreciate the significance of the rulings made in these cases and how importantly they affected both future WTO dispute settlement actions and IEL more generally.

Notwithstanding the generally excellent qualities of this book, there are some criticisms that I feel constrained to make. Although Professor Jackson did serve for a period in the 1970s as USTR General Counsel, he is not a trade negotiator and can be excused on this basis for some inaccuracies and/or misperceptions (which generally are not material to the theme of the book). For example, on page 100, he states that the negotiators of the Punta del Este Declaration in their reference to a ‘single undertaking’ ‘meant that all participants in the negotiations who wished at the end to become members of the new organization, and thus participants in the UR treaty norms, would be required to accept all the obligations of the massive treaty complex’. This is simply wrong. In 1986, the ‘single undertaking’ reference meant that the services and goods negotiations would be conducted side-by-side with a decision to be made at the end on how to treat the results in a GATT framework. Only towards the end of the UR, after the negotiation of the text for the establishment of a (then) ‘Multilateral Trade Organization’ was the ‘single undertaking’ reference massaged by the Quad grouping (USA, EC, Japan and Canada) into the all-or-nothing proposition that it became.

Some might also object to Professor Jackson's implication on page 121 that Ministerial Conferences of the WTO might better be held not ‘on the road’ but in Geneva when the 1998 Conference demonstrated so clearly that Geneva is too small and ill-equipped to host the massive events that the WTO Ministerial Conferences have (unfortunately) become.

I quibble with Jackson's manner of listing what he says are goals of the WTO dispute settlement system that need to be considered. He does not say where these goals come from and at least two of the goals that he lists would be found objectionable to a large number of practitioners. These are point ‘e, Fill gaps and resolve ambiguities in the treaty text’ and point ‘l. Define and rationalize allocation of government powers, that is to “repair” the constitution and provide for evolution’. If the first of these is a recognized objective, I wonder how Jackson would imagine the outcome of a dispute settlement action addressed to whether partners in a free trade agreement should exempt each other from the application of global safeguard action. As to the second, unless I am seriously mistaken, the WTO does not concern itself with the issue of power allocation and makes clear that it is always the central government authority that bears responsibility for the implementation of the treaty obligation.

As should be apparent from the overall thrust of my review, in the broad scheme of things, these are really minor objections to aspects of the book that are not central to the theme. This book is an important work that makes a contribution to a debate with current and practical significance. As the author has said, the point of the book is to contribute to the start of a debate on the relationship between evolving concepts of international (both IL and IEL) law and sovereignty and I believe it achieves what it sets out to accomplish in this respect.