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1. Professor, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law; first Director, WTO Appellate Body Secretariat; former Senior Negotiator for Canada of the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization and the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU).
John Jackson pioneered international trade law, helped to establish the WTO, and taught legions of professors and trade policy officials who continue to promote his goals of a multilateral trading system based on the rule of law, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. A great man, he was also a very dear man - humble, quiet, unassuming, kind, and private. In his writings, he had the unique ability to distill very complex issues down to a few, readily comprehensible paragraphs for students and readers.
David Kennedy has chronicled:
A senior law professor at the University of Michigan, Jackson presides over the field of trade law in the United States. Indeed, it was Jackson who largely invented the field, transforming his experiences with the United States Trade Representative's office from a narrow regulatory specialty into a recognized subject of legal study. In many ways, we can see Jackson's as a classic academic project - founding and developing a field or school. He began by getting trade law recognized as a significant field of study for American lawyers. In The World Trading System, he goes further, claiming, quite modestly and tentatively, to represent what he terms 'international economic law'.2
As a champion of the field, John developed the first comprehensive casebook on international trade law,3