DOMINIC COPPENS advises governments, companies, and civil society on international trade rules, in particular on the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). He assists WTO Members in trade disputes concerning trade in goods (with a particular focus on subsidy rules), trade in services, and intellectual property rights. He has advised WTO Members at each stage of WTO dispute settlement proceedings, covering consultations, panel, appeal, compliance, and arbitration proceedings.
Dominic’s recent work focuses on the intersection between trade and sustainability, including on circular economy initiatives, international waste regulation, carbon pricing and offsets, new international rule-making in the area of sustainable trade, and trade aspects of the European Union Green Deal.
Dominic combines his private practice at Sidley with active academic work. Dominic is Professor of International Economic Law at Maastricht University, Department of International and European Law (the Netherlands). He also regularly teaches at other universities, including at bachelor and master level on international economic law (at Leuven University and Ghent University, Belgium), specialized courses on WTO subsidy law (at EPLO’s LLM on International Economic Law, Greece) and PhD courses on trade and sustainability (most recently at the World Trade Institute, Switzerland). He speaks at international conferences and webinars, and publishes on various aspects of international trade law in peer-reviewed journals and books.
Dominic is the author of the leading treatise on WTO subsidy law, “WTO Disciplines on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures: Balancing Policy Space and Legal Constraints” (Cambridge University Press, 2014). The book has been described as “a masterful analysis of subsidy laws,” and as a “goldmine of analysis that will be useful to scholars and practitioners alike – for a long time” (Lucas Rubini, World Trade Review, October 2015), and as a “remarkable book … of rare clarity and precision,” presenting “a unique accomplishment” as it is “the first very comprehensive discussion of the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) Agreement from a law and economics perspective” (Petros Mavroidis, foreword to the book).
Dominic previously served as a short term Legal Officer at the WTO’s Legal Affairs Division and was a post-doctoral fellow at Leuven University (Belgium).