It was a great privilege for the University of Minnesota Law School to host a global conference on “The Political Economy of International Trade Law” on campus on September 15–16, 2000 in honor of our colleague Professor Robert E. Hudec, who was retiring after twenty-eight years on the University of Minnesota law faculty. This volume is a result of the intellectual exchange and energy that occurred during the conference.

Although this volume analyzes the historical and current issues affecting the World Trade Organization specifically and international trade in general, its production could not have occurred without the leadership and intellectual commitment of Professor Robert Hudec. Professor Hudec, the author of six leading books and over thirty-five articles and monographs on international trade, joined the University of Minnesota Law faculty in 1972. Previously, he had been a member of the Yale University Law faculty; a Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellow in the Office of General Agreements on Tariff and Trade, in Geneva, Switzerland; and Assistant General Counsel, Office of Special Trade Representatives for Trade Negotiations, in Washington, DC. Earlier, he had clerked for the Honorable Potter Stewart on the United States Supreme Court. Although making his academic home at the University of Minnesota for nearly thirty years, Professor Hudec also held visiting faculty appointments at Stanford University, the University of Texas, Cornell University Law School, the University of Toronto, the Kiel Institute for World Economics, and the Université Jean Moulin, Lyon, France.