scholarly journals The WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body as a Voice Mechanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 820-861
Author(s):  
Joshua Paine
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Amicus Curiae ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The World ◽  
Dispute Settlement System ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article focuses on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) – the diplomatic body, consisting of representatives of WTO members, that administers the dispute settlement system. Focusing on the WTO, the article provides one perspective on the relationship between international tribunals and the political bodies that oversee the governance of such tribunals. Specifically, I argue that the DSB operates as an important ‘voice’ mechanism, which enables members to provide regular feedback to WTO adjudicators, and helps sustain the internal legitimacy of WTO adjudication. However, the DSB can also be used in ways that undermine judicial independence. In short, the DSB is a key site where the tension plays out between WTO adjudicators’ independence from members, and control by, and accountability to, members. The episodes examined in detail to develop this argument are the crisis of a generation ago over amicus curiae briefs, and the ongoing crisis over Appellate Body appointments.

scholarly journals The Impending Dejudicialization of the WTO Dispute Settlement System?

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 316-321
Author(s):  
Richard H. Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The World ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

The Appellate Body (AB) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is facing a crisis. Appointment of AB members requires a consensus of the Dispute Settlement Body (comprised of all WTO members), and the United States has been blocking a consensus on further appointments since Donald J. Trump became the president. Without new appointments, the ranks of the AB have been diminishing as AB members’ terms have been expiring. If this continues (and many expect the United States to continue blocking a consensus on appointments), then in December 2019, through attrition, the number of AB members will fall below the threshold necessary to render decisions, at which point the AB will cease to function.

scholarly journals Addressing (or Not) Widespread Concerns with the WTO

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 321-322
Author(s):  
Terence P. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The World ◽  
Dispute Settlement System ◽  
Advisory Opinions

The United States for at least sixteen years has had serious concerns with whether the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system was operating according to the terms upon which WTO Members had agreed. While the United States has been a major supporter of the WTO system and the dispute settlement system generally, concerns about sovereignty and the proper functioning of the system have been important since at least 2002, reflected in U.S. legislation and actions by three administrations. Concerns have existed on (1) whether panels and the Appellate Body have honored the limitations contained in Articles 3.2 and 19.2 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) not to create rights or obligations; (2) the issuance of advisory opinions on issues not raised or not necessary to the resolution of the dispute; (3) actions of the Appellate Body that permit deviation from the DSU without affirmative authorization by the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB); and, former Appellate Body members continuing to be involved in cases after their term has expired (failure to complete appeals in the DSU required maximum time of ninety days). These are all issues that have concerned the United States for years but also have been raised by other members.

scholarly journals Discontinuity in the Internalization of the World Trade Organization Rules: Assessing the Democratic Deficit Critique Against the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement System

2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 1039
Author(s):  
Yuka Fukunaga
Keyword(s):  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Member States ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The World ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

International institutions are often criticized for their democratic deficit. Among these institutions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system is most frequently targeted. This article focuses on the strength of this critique and aims to refute its factual premise through the examination of several Panel and Appellate Body decisions. The author also argues that the WTO dispute settlement system deliberately leaves a certain degree of discontinuity between members’ domestic legal orders and the WTO Agreement, such that the system pays a degree of deference to member states and allows substantial discretion in the process of internalizing the rules of the WTO Agreement within domestic legal orders. Finally, the author concludes that this discontinuity remains strong, and serves to enhance the democratic autonomy of member states instead of defeating it.

Conclusions to Part II

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-166
Author(s):  
Sivan Shlomo Agon
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
Goal Attainment ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Rule Compliance ◽  
The World ◽  
Dispute Settlement System ◽  
The One

When asked what, if anything, distinguishes US-Clove Cigarettes from other disputes filed with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement System (DSS), an Appellate Body (AB) Secretariat staff member replied: ‘A number of things and nothing at the same time’.1 This answer aptly captures the story of trade-and disputes and the DSS’s goal-attainment patterns in such cases, as revealed in this second part of the book. On the one hand, as in all WTO disputes, the DSS appears to be engaged in this class of cases in the routine legal exercise of law application and interpretation while pursuing its multiple goals, including rule-compliance and dispute resolution. On the other hand, as a WTO practitioner remarked when discussing the ‘interpretative exercise’ carried out by the DSS in trade-and disputes:...

scholarly journals Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-172
Author(s):  
CHAD P. BOWN ◽  
PETROS C. MAVROIDIS
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

The WTO dispute settlement system has come under severe criticism in recent times, which does not seem, for now at least, to affect its relevance. In terms of output, 2017 was yet another bumper year. We review eight cases that constitute the ‘last word’ of the dispute settlement system: we review exhaustively all Appellate Body reports, as well as all un-appealed panel reports.

Mutually agreed solutions under the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding: An Analytical Framework after the Softwood Lumber Arbitration

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALBERTO ALVAREZ-JIMÉNEZ
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Trade Disputes ◽  
Applicable Law ◽  
Softwood Lumber ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Intimate Relation ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

AbstractThe unprecedented enforcement of the mutually agreed solution (MAS) in the WTO Softwood Lumber disputes – but outside the WTO dispute settlement system – and the recent use of MAS to resolve important trade disputes should trigger a hard look at these dispute settlement instruments provided for by the DSU. This article seeks to provide a detailed framework of analysis of MAS under the DSU that allows the WTO dispute settlement system to adjudicate MAS-related disputes. WTO Members should not go outside the system to enforce MAS. The article illustrates that MAS can create binding obligations and that MAS are WTO law, given the explicit reference to them in the DSU, their intimate relation with the WTO-covered agreements and the requirement for compliance with these agreements. In addition, the article offers an interpretation of the DSU that allows panels and the Appellate Body to regard MAS as applicable law. This interpretation is offered in the view that there is no policy reason to sustain that these controversies – always fully related to WTO rights and obligations and framed under the corners of the covered agreements – have to be resolved by an adjudication system other than that of the WTO.

A correction

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES McCALL SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Amicus Curiae ◽  
Supportive Evidence ◽  
Erroneous Conclusion ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Political Controversy

In my article ‘WTO Dispute Settlement: the Politics of Procedure in Appellate body Rulings’ (March 2003), I linked the resignation of Debra Steger, former Director of the Appellate Body Secretariat, to the political controversy regarding amicus curiae submissions. This erroneous conclusion was based on two interviews in Geneva and implicitly supportive evidence from a WTO Reporter article.

scholarly journals Book Review: Jens Lehne, Crisis at the WTO: Is the Blocking of Appointments to the WTO Appellate Body by the United States Legally Justified?

sui generis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Sieber-Gasser
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
Wto Appellate Body ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

The US policy of blocking new appointments to the WTO Appellate Body relied on a number of legal arguments against the body’s work and ultimately succeeded in rendering the appellate mechanism of the WTO dispute settlement system inoperable in December 2019. In his book, Jens Lehne carefully analyses the various legal arguments officially brought forward by the US until summer 2019. His analysis is proof of the vulnerability of the WTO: despite equality of WTO members enshrined in the WTO treaties, the fate of the WTO remains largely dependent on the willingness of large economies to comply with a legally binding dispute settlement system.

Substance and Style—How the WTO Adjudicators Legitimize their Decisions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Gerstetter
Keyword(s):  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Member States ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The World ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

This chapter analyses how the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement bodies legitimize their decisions and by implication also the WTO Dispute Settlement System as well as the WTO as an institution more broadly. The author argues there are two relevant dimensions for understanding how judges legitimize judicial decisions: the substantive outcomes of cases, that is who wins and loses and what interpretations are adopted, and the way a judicial decision is justified. She concludes that the WTO dispute settlement bodies act strategically in order to win the acceptance of the member states, and ultimately legitimize this dispute settlement system as a judicial entity.

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