The introduction sets out the book’s approach to the great judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) between 1961 and 1979. Each of the Court’s landmark cases will be analyzed in comparative context, in particular by contrast to the enforcement and escape mechanisms commonly employed in international trade treaties including the postwar General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and today’s World Trade Organization (WTO). The book will also discuss the explanations for these judgments put forward by some of the most influential lawyers then working at the Court, above all French ECJ judge and later President of the Court Robert Lecourt. The introduction sets out the argument that the greatest innovations of the European legal order, including the new role for private individuals and national courts provided for by the doctrines of direct effect and supremacy, were directly linked to addressing the practical problem of how to effectively enforce trade treaty obligations while prohibiting unilateral safeguards and inter-state retaliation.