Bio
James Bacchus is a CIGI senior fellow, as well as the Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida. He was a founding judge, twice chairman and chief judge of the Appellate Body at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He served as a member of the United States Congress and as an international trade negotiator for the United States. Currently, James is a senior counsellor to the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development in Switzerland, and a senior fellow of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. He served on the high-level advisory panel to the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, chaired the Global Commission on Trade and Investment Policy of the International Chamber of Commerce, and chaired the Global Sustainability Council of the World Economic Forum. For more than 14 years, he chaired the global practice of a law firm that is the largest in the United States and one of the largest in the world. He is the author of the books Trade and Freedom (2004) and The Willing World: Shaping and Sharing a Sustainable Global Prosperity (2018). He is a frequent writer in leading publications and a frequent speaker on prominent platforms worldwide.