Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann - Constitutional Functions and Constitutional Problems of International Economic Law

This book was submitted to, and accepted by, the Faculty of Law of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as a post-doctoral Habilitationsschrift (habilitation thesis) in 1989.1 am much indebted to Professor Rudolf Bernhardt (Director of the Heidelberg Max-Planck-Institute for Public Comparative Law and International Law and Judge at the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg), Professor Herrmann Mosler (former Director of the Heidelberg Max-Planck-Institute and former Judge at the International Court of Justice at The Hague) and to Professor Detlev Chr. Dicke (University of Fribourg), without whose support and encouragement this book would never have been completed. I am also grateful to the Director-General of GATT, Mr. Arthur Dunkel, who generously allowed me a leave of absence from my work as legal counsellor in the GATT Secretariat, and to the German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) for its financial assistance which enabled me to write most of this study during my leave without pay from the GATT Secretariat. Thanks are also due to Christopher Prins of the UN Economic Commission for Europe for reading the manuscript and correcting my imperfect English and to Mrs. Patricia Bongard-Ragonesi and Mrs. Sandra Eberle for the typing work. But most of all, I am indebted to my wife and four children for their patience, love and serenity in spite of my often unreasonable demands in connection with this study.

I dedicate this study to my friends and former colleagues in the Legal Division of the GATT secretariat, with whom I could discuss many of the issues analyzed in this book and who are often confronted, in GATT negotiations and GATT dispute settlement proceedings, with the constitutional problems of international and domestic foreign trade law.