Trade and the Environment Fundamental Issues in International and WTO Law

• Contains in-depth analysis of core concepts of general international law (conflicts of norms, resolution of conflicts of norms, proportionality, sovereignty, extraterritorial jurisdiction) and provides fresh approaches to controversial issues in international and WTO law.
• Explicit foundation on established insights from legal theory provides transparent and persuasive argumentation
• Detailed analysis of main principles of the GATT and the TBT Agreements demonstrates more precisely the relevance of WTO law for international environmental law and domestic regulatory autonomy.
• Close legal analysis reveals that the status of PPM-based measures in WTO law is less controversial than is commonly supposed, which has considerable relevance for environmental measures such as climate labelling and border tax adjustments.
• In-depth analysis of the international climate and ozone regimes and their relationship with WTO law informs the reader in detail about these two regimes

The relevance of the WTO legal system for environmental protection is a central topic in general international law, WTO law and international environmental law. The relationship between WTO law and international and domestic efforts to protect the environment has moved to centre stage in WTO and international environmental law. It has also spurred the discussion on fragmentation in international law in recent years.

This book analyses these issues by examining the 'horizontal' interaction between WTO law and 'other' international law, the 'vertical' relationship between WTO law and domestic law, and the contents and the interrelations between fundamental provisions of WTO law. This study relies on established insights from legal theory in order to achieve greater clarity in legal argumentation. The main results of this analysis are applied to two topical instances of international regime interplay, namely the relevance of WTO law for international and domestic measures protecting the earth's climate and the ozone layer.

A series of controversial topics in WTO and general international law are addressed in this book, including the notion of conflicts of norms, and the resolution of conflicts of norms; the role of international law in WTO proceedings; extraterritorial jurisdiction and unilateral trade measures; proportionality and balancing of interests in international and WTO law; the core disciplines of the GATT and the TBT Agreement; process and production-based measures (PPMs) in WTO law; climate protection, protection of the ozone layer, and WTO disciplines.

Readership: Universities, law libraries, scholars, practitioners in WTO law, international lawyers, lawyers in ministries, NGOs etc, students in international law, WTO law and legal theory.