The World Trade Organization employs more than 600 individuals from its approximately 80 member countries. As such, its work is extensive, as is its documentation. In addition to the array of content maintained on its website, it maintains 48 different databases, many freely available to the public, and produces a great number of print and digital publications. This section provides just a few recommendations for locating secondary materials describing the WTO’s work, recommended starting points for researching using the WTO’s own resources on the web, and links to WTO materials in commercial databases.
Finding Secondary Sources
VU libraries hold hundreds of titles discussing and analyzing the work of the WTO. In seeking publications relevant to your research, consider utilizing the subject “World Trade Organization” in a subject field in the Advanced Search form in the library catalog, along with any other subject terms relevant to your research in an additional subject field.
WTO Resources on the Web
As discussed above in the Treaty Research section of the guide, the depositary of a treaty often publishes current status information concerning those the treaty (for example, who is currently a party, when they signed or ratified a treaty, etc.), and the WTO is a depositary for many multilateral trade treaties. To locate current status information for WTO treaties, see Status of WTO Legal Instruments. Information concerning state parties often links to official documents containing notifications.
Historical materials: Researchers seeking materials pertaining to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, signed in 1947, now have access to materials being progressively digitized by the WTO, including negotiating materials, in GATT Documents. Stanford Libraries also maintains an online repository of historical GATT materials.
An excellent resource for researchers seeking to understand the operation of WTO-affiliated trade agreements is the WTO Analytical Index. Content is organized by agreement and by agreement article, with a link to any applicable dispute resolution reports pertaining to that article, as well as a link to a guide describing action concerning or discussion of that treaty article by WTO entities. The reports typically provide document symbols for the primary sources they reference, which allow researchers to easily locate those documents. The index is routinely updated.
Researchers seeking information pertaining to particular trade topics might also opt to browse the assembled materials for those topics under the menu “Trade Topics,” which includes pages for various categories of goods, of services, and a page devoted to intellectual property. Topic pages organize a variety of useful content for researchers, including links to relevant treaties, to the work of WTO committees handling those topics, and to data and publications produced by the WTO concerning those topics.
Researchers seeking to understand trade law and policy in a particular jurisdiction may wish to consult the Trade Policy Review documents available for that jurisdiction. These collections of periodically assembled documents include both reports from the member states describing their own trade policies and independent reports generated by WTO bodies. The chronological lists of reports are relatively easy to browse, whereas the search function for particular types of reports directs users to a pre-populated search in the WTO’s online official document repository (discussed below).
WTO Documents Online is the WTO’s repository for official documents (produced by WTO entities such as committees and adjudicative bodies). Like many document databases, it is best utilized in conjunction with other research tools that can provide the researcher some information concerning the documents that they might be seeking, such as citation, issuing entity, or date information. The Guide to Documentation is a helpful research aid. Researchers browsing WTO official documents will notice a unique symbol applied to each in the upper-right corner. Document symbols are ideal finding aids, and researchers seeking a known document should use the document symbol to search for the document in the platform; entering an accurate document symbol as a search term in a web search engine is oftentimes even an effective search strategy, as WTO documents are fairly well-indexed on the web.
Commercial Databases
- TradeLawGuide This link opens in a new windowResearch database for the law of the World Trade Organization. Extensive collection of WTO documents and related content.
Featured Resource: TradeLawGuide is a resource, accessible via Databases A-Z, focused specifically on GATT and WTO jurisprudence. The agreement library, which offers annotated versions of key treaties includes a citator, similar to the case law citators to which U.S. legal researchers are accustomed to using in commercial database, which organizes WTO jurisprudence referencing particular provisions of treaties. Beyond primary source materials, the site also offers expert commentary, and a well-organized, though still in development, section pertaining to regional and bilateral treaties.
- Lexis: GATT Panel & WTO Dispute Settlement Reports, coverage from 1948 (GATT) and 1995 (WTO).
- Westlaw: WTO & GATT Secretariat Awards, coverage from 1949.
- Westlaw: WTO & GATT Panel Decisions, coverage from 1948 (GATT) and 1995 (WTO).
- Oxford Reports on International Law: select WTO as jurisdiction. (Users can locate additional decisions from other jurisdictions concerning trade and economic law; filter by subject to “International economic law,” or further to “international trade.”)
