The Brooklyn Law School Library’s subscription to Trade Law Guide enables researchers at BLS to research material on World Trade Organization jurisprudence. The database was created by a team of trade lawyers, researchers and engineers so that WTO law could be researched in a methodical, comprehensive and efficient manner. The database allows users to search through thousands of documents and zero in on the exact references that answer your research queries. It establishes the standard for legal research in the area of WTO law.
Trade Law Guide is an index that serves as a gateway to specific provisions of WTO agreements, instruments and other subject matter. It has four major tabs: Research Tools; Jurisprudence; Dispute Documents; and Negotiating History. The first of those tabs has a subtab called Article Citator which provides Pinpoint access to WTO jurisprudence relevant to a provision without having to filter through annotations); its Jurisprudence Citators helps researchers ascertain the status of passages in WTO jurisprudence; the Interpretation tab helps in finding provisions and jurisprudence encompassing the rules of treaty interpretation applicable to the WTO agreements and instruments. There is also a Terms & Phrases tab to help researchers see at a glance where a particular term or phrase has been explicitly defined or where it has been considered or commented upon in WTO jurisprudence.
Other features include DSB Minutes which contain discussions of policy and other issues that arise in respect of WTO jurisprudence. The Jurisprudence Pending tab provides information on ongoing disputes for which reports, awards or decisions are pending. The Annotated Agreements & Texts tab provides fully annotated texts of six principal WTO agreements that have been the subject of extensive dispute settlement activity. The Negotiating History tab allows researchers to download and sort Uruguay Round negotiating documents. Access to the database is by IP address recognition. Off-campus access requires implementation of the BLS proxy instructions. Go to the SARA catalog to search for it.
