The Role Of Non-WTO International Law In The WTO Dispute Settlement

WTO is the important research field in the international law since it's the international organization and rules governing and regulating the world multilateral trade. It is of great significance for our country, which is the contracting party to the WTO agreements and the trading power ,to study WTO rules. This thesis emphasizes on the role of the other international law in the WTO dispute settlement, based on the theory of "systemic integration of international law", aiming at clarifying the close relationship and interplay of WTO and other international law.This thesis is divided into four parts. The opening chapter gives a general overview of the WTO regime and WTO dispute settlement.Also, it distinguishes some important concepts, including the "WTO rules and non-WTO international law""jurisdiction and applicable law""the application of law and the interpretation of law""higher norms and lower norms""general international law and special international law ".This chaprer can be considered as the foundation of the further study.The second chapter mainly talks about the theoretical basis of the whole thesis. International law is a systemic integration which comprises the WTO rules and different laws belonging to different field interplay in some way.WTO, which is classified as the international treaties, is not isolated from other international rules. Furthermore, WTO rules have close connection with jus cogens, general international law and other branches of international law which have the same and similar objects.In the third chapter, we emphasizes on the different functions of different international law sources: applicable law, interpretation and evidence.What we emphasize on is that the international law system is a legal hierarchy in which jus cogens is the highest law, therefore, other lower norm must keep consistent with the jus cogens. In this chapter, we bases our research on a lot of cases in WTO.The last chapter is the summary and conclusion of the whole thesis. In this chapter, we stress the systemic integration of international law and connection between the WTO rules and other international law.