The late Robert E. Hudec was the Melvin E. Steen Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota. He was a leading authority on trade law and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). During the early stages of the Kennedy Round of multilateral trade negotiations, conducted under the auspices of the GATT, he was Assistant General Counsel to the Special Representative for Trade Negotiations (STR) in the Executive Office of the President of the United States (1963–5), later known as the Executive Office of the President. Professor Hudec wrote many articles in professional journals on the law of international economic affairs. He was the author of Adjudication of International Trade Disputes (1977) and The GATT Legal System and World Trade Diplomacy (1975).

• Part I. A History of the Legal Relationship: 1. Post-war negotiations on trade liberalization; 2. First decade of the GATT: 1948–57; 3. Demands for a new legal relationship: 1958–63; 4. Defining the new relationship: 1964–71; 5. Testing the new relationship: 1972–9; 6. Developments in the 1980s: form without substance; Part II. A Legal Critique of the GATT's Current Policy: 7. Basic elements of the legal criticism; 8. Separating legal and economic issues; 9. Impact of GATT legal policy on internal decision-making; 10. Impact on decisions in other governments: non-reciprocity; 11. Impact on decisions in other governments: preferences; 12. First steps towards a better legal policy.

'In a review of a collection of the late Robert Hudec's essays in 2000, David Palmeter wrote that Hudec's writings on international trade law 'are insightful, sensible, eloquent, witty and generally unavailable' … Cambridge's re-issuance of Developing Countries in the GATT Legal System, originally published in 1987, confirms the first four parts of this analysis and, happily, resolves part of the last problem. … Hudec provides both a history and a critique of the role of the developing countries in the GATT legal system … one cannot conclude a review of a book by Robert Hudec without paying tribute to his clear and concise writing style.' World Trade Review