The World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system is a vast subject, and provides a great opportunity to explore in more detail than I am allowed in this chapter. But I hope that this contribution will provide at least a framework for discussion.

Context and landscape: the world of interdependence and its realities

The general question of ‘globalization’

It is likely that the last decade of the 20th century, and the first decade of the 21st century, will be remembered as a period during which generally accepted assumptions of international law and international economic law were challenged in fundamental ways. Many of these challenges come from the factors that have lead us to the current period of globalization. Most significantly, these factors are the great reduction in the time and cost of both transport and communications, and the ‘refinement’ and ‘efficiency’ of weapons. These factors lead to circumstances that, on the one hand, require international cooperative institutions, but on the other hand, lead some policymakers to conclude that traditional notions of ‘sovereignty’ and the independence of the nation-state must be reserved for and, in certain circumstances, need to trump international institutions and their norms. One such international institution that cannot escape this landscape of facts ‘on the ground’, and the policies that relate to them, is the WTO. The natural trade barriers that existed a century ago, with respect to the factors just mentioned (transport and communication changes) have disappeared or have been deeply reduced, and the result is a degree of interdependence which has not, heretofore, been seen.