Raj Bhala

Who is Raj Bhala?

Rakesh "Raj" Kumar Bhala is an Indian-American lawyer and professor, prominent in the fields of International Trade Law and Islamic Law. He is the Rice Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law. Bhala is the author of 65 articles and 13 books.

In international trade law, Bhala’s Stare Decisis Trilogy was the first to highlight that, in practice, the doctrine of precedent operates in multilateral trade adjudication.

His Doha Round Trilogy pointed out that the detailed negotiating texts of the round had deviated from a key original purpose of the round: re-writing trade rules to help alleviate poverty, and thereby reduce the vulnerability of marginalized populations to Islamist extremist ideologies.

Bhala authored Modern GATT Law, the first major treatise on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade since the 1970 publication of The Law of the GATT and 1969 publication of World Trade and the Law of GATT. The Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization cited the 1st edition of the treatise, and its 2nd edition received scholarly attention.

He also has authored the textbook International Trade Law, which has been cited by United States federal courts, and portions of this text were translated into Vietnamese. Bhala’s monograph Trade, Development, and Social Justice, applies Catholic social justice theory to special and differential treatment rules of the multilateral trading system.