The panther is a cat! But is it a leopard or a lion?

Not too long ago, one could make waves by claiming that WTO rules are, after all, just treaty rules. They are, in biological terms, but a ‘genus’ of the broader ‘family’ of public international law, much like panthers are a genus of the broader cat family.

Many GATT negotiators thought differently. They portrayed their agreement as special, a self-contained economic contract setting out a balance of concessions, rather than legally binding rules part of international law. In many ways, this remains the approach today in, for example, most of international financial regulation: highly technical, detailed rules, but not considered by their drafters as ‘binding’ or ‘international law’.

Reading this digest, one realizes just how fast and comprehensively perceptions have changed. Graham Cook's extraordinary work offers a structured overview of nearly one thousand statements by WTO panels and the WTO Appellate Body on topics of general public international law. To the extent they are still out there, this digest should silence those who continue to believe that WTO law is a self-contained regime, that WTO panels can only consider WTO covered agreements, or that one can be an effective WTO lawyer without knowing public international law.

Yet, Mr Cook's message goes beyond the idea that WTO law is part of public international law, i.e. that public international law plays a role also in WTO dispute settlement. His work demonstrates to specialists in other fields of international law (say, human rights or environmental lawyers) that they too can actually learn something about public international law by looking at WTO jurisprudence. It is, to come back to my biological metaphor above, not just that the panther, finally, realizes that it is part of the cat family; other cats (even domestic cats) can actually learn something about what it means to be a cat by observing the panther's features, habits and behaviour.