Fairness in WTO Law

The idea of fairness is a recurrent one in international economic law and relations. By and large, however, commentators have failed to provide a structured understanding for this vital concept or explain its reflection in legal rules. This article proposes a theory of fairness as part of a broader theory of justice, suggesting that fairness is a part of justice, but not the whole of it. Rather, justice may be thought of as a combination of equality plus fairness (i.e. justice = equality + fairness), with the proviso that in any complex system of legal rules, equality must be greater than, or conceptually prior to, fairness (i.e. equality \u3e fairness). In the latter half of this article a look is taken at how these conceptual relationships are expressed in the law of the World Trade Organization