| WTO law is the most important legel system for international trade relations. It is composed of the package of all of the agreements that have been signed in the Uruguay Round and the principles and rules embedded in those agreements. WTO law mainly consists of international treaties so that it should belong to the scope of pubilic international law. But the nature of WTO law has not been correctly recoganized. Some scholars say that WTO rules are not legally binding so it will not fall into the category of pubilic international law. Other scholars believe that WTO law is of the nature of international trade law or international economic law. But they also think that international trade law or international economic law is different from international public law because of the different legal basis. According to their logic, WTO law can not be looked as a part of pubic international law. There are still some scholars who take the view that WTO law is a"self-contained"or"self-isolation"legal system and it has nothing to do with other other legal sustems including pubic international law. In response to these views, the paper sought to clarify the nature of WTO law and the relation of WTO law to pubic international law in a comprehensive and systematic way. The object of this thesis is to testify WTO law's nature of intrnational law and analyze the legal relationship between WTO law and pubic international law.In structure, this thesis is divided into two parts and six chapters. The first part mainly demonstrates the nature of WTO law from a macro—perspective . This part consists of three sections. The first section briefly introduces the process of the foundation of WTO organization and elaborated the concept of"WTO law". The second section of the charpter analyses the reasons why WTO law is being excluded from the corpus of international law .In this section the author intrduces various theories negating WTO law's international law nature and rebuts all those views.in the third section of this charpter, the author gives several resons for testifying her point that WTO law is one branch of the bigger tree of pubic international law. These reasons are: 1, WTO law is in line with international law's definition. 2, The agreements in WTO legal system are essentially international treaties. 3, WTO law is a"public"system or a "public" order. 4, The principle of reciprocity in WTO law reflects the"mutual"feature in the creation and application of international law. 5, WTO law not only creates new rules but also recognizes the established and accepted norms in international law. The author also points out that WTO law's nature of international law is gaining more and more recoganition by scholars and officials in WTO organization, and in the reaserch area, reserching WTO law from the new perspective of the rules of international law become more and more popular. In the last part of the first chapter, the author points out the siganifigance of making clear of the nature of WTO law and its relation to international law.Chapter II of this thesis analyzes and discusses the question of sources of WTO law while refering to sources of international law. The author believes that, first of all, WTO law is part of international law so that sources of international law speculated in Article 38 of the Statute of International Court of Justice are of important reference value in determining sources of WTO law. However, sources of WTO law are not fully equivalent to sources of international law. Because it will lead to confusing WTO law with international law therefore making WTO law lose its specialty. The author brings out that the question of what are the sources of WTO law is the same question of what are the forms of rules having been made in the scope of WTO.In this charpter the author discusses whether the WTO agreement, the previous reports of the panel and the appellate body of WTO, international customary law, the decisions made by organs in WTO constitute sources of WTO law.In the third chapter, the author discusses the relationship between WTO law and the fundamental principles in international law. The author holds that WTO law conforms to those principles. The rules of WTO law reflect the principle of state sovereign, principle of equity, principle of coherence, principle of good faith and pinciple of resolving disputes peacefully.In the forth chapter, the author mainly probes the relationship between WTO law and the rules of international treaty law. The author discusses this question from three aspects: the type of the treaty, the form of tyeaty negociation and treaty interpretation. The author concludes that firstly, the treaty of WTO is a special type called mixed agreement. Secondly, the form of negociation of WTO treaty is also special because it is a packed deal. Thirdly, in the process of treaty interpretation, the panel and the appellate body have been sticking to the coustomary rules of treaty interpretation in public international law. It is a relatively foreseeable and safety way of treaty interpretation. Through this way, the treaty interpretation of WTO agreements by WTO dispute settlement body can be more acceptable. In dealing with this issue, the author compares the way of treaty interpretation by WTO DSB with that of the ICJ and the court of Europe.The fifth chapter compares the system of legal responsibility under WTO law with the system of legal responsibility under general international law. Through the comparision, the author finds that the system of legal responsibility under WTO law is analogous to that under international law. The author then holds the view that the system of responsibility under WTO law actually stems from the system of responsibility under international law. In this sense the the system of responsibility under WTO law can not be seen as the"self—contained regime"and the general rules of legal responsibility under international law could fill in the gaps in the WTO law under some conditions.The last chapter of this essay deals with three questions in the process of WTO dispute settlement that the author thinks most relevent to the tenet of international law in this respect. By analying these three questions in detail,the author makes these findings:first,WTO dispute settlement system is a part of peaceful dispute settlement system of international society.Second, according to the investigation of the practice of the DSU,the WTO law is not a"self—contained"regime, because its openness to other rules in international law.Third, the WTO dispute settlement body is part of international justice system. The author then compares the WTO dispute settlement body with the ICJ and ITLOS.In the end, the author makes a concise conclsion of the whole thesis.
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