This incisive book provides a comprehensive overview of the WTO dispute settlement practice from 1995 up until the present day, illustrating the need for it to be resurrected from its current state of crisis. The WTO Dispute Settlement System will prove an essential read for students and scholars of WTO law, as well as lawyers, political scientists and policy-oriented economists interested in the WTO dispute settlement system.
Subsidies are arguably the dominant theme in International Economic Law. A prolific case law has been elaborated by WTO Panels and Appellate Body in response to the multitude of complaints lodged in the past two decades (Softwood Lumber, Airbus, Boeing, etc.) Unfortunately, it is possible to be overwhelmed by the complexity of this case law. This book provides a comprehensive approach in response to this complexity. First, it avoids unnecessary legal jargon, making it accessible to a large public. Second, it adopts a comprehensive and progressive approach where legal subtleties are not avoided but presented at the right moment and the right place. The reader is therefore not overwhelmed from the outset by a multitude of details. The first Part of the book adopts the perspective of a WTO Member seeking to counter an alleged subsidy granted by another Member. To this end, this first Part scans and analyzes in detail all WTO Agreements, containing cumulative disciplines and remedies relating to subsidies. Therefore, it is not only the SCM Agreement that is scanned and analyzed but also the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), GATT 1994, and even the 1980 Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft (ATCA). The second Part of the book adopts the perspective of a WTO Member accused of granting subsidies violating subsidies disciplines.To this end, an original classification is offered of the various strategies that can be used by this Member. For this purpose, a distinction is made between the “threshold strategy” where the existence of a challengeable subsidy is recused from the outset, the “denying violation of disciplines strategy,”the “exemption or exception strategy,” the “procedural and evidentiary strategy,” and finally the “implementing strategy.” The last Part of this book, which could turn out to be the most useful for the community of agents concerned by subsidies, offers an original examination of pending legal issues. To this end, a relevant distinction is established between pending legal issues partially answered by present case law and pending legal issues not still answered by present case law. This case law and the norms disciplining subsidies in WTO Agreements are of utmost importance first for International Trade Ministries, Parliaments, and International Institutions (OECD, CNUCED, FAO, etc.). However, Non-Governmental Organizations (World Wide Fund, etc.) are also directly concerned by this topic regarding, for example, fisheries subsidies and their impact on overexploitation of marine resources. The private sector (fishing fleets, fishermen, extractive industries, etc.) is also affected by this topic particularly regarding future investments.Law firms involved in subsidies cases are naturally at the forefront of the community of agents concerned by this topic.
Non-violation complaints are a particular feature of the WTO legal order. Ever since the GATT came into force, non-violation complaints, based upon the tradition of bilateral US Trade Agreements, have puzzled scholars and practitioners alike. This book provides an in-depth analysis of panel practice and theory on the subject. It offers a new approach to reading and interpreting non-violation within contemporary international law. The reader will find not only a comprehensive analysis but also a new theory on non-violation complaints, based upon international liability. The book will be of help to all dealing with the complexities of WTO law and litigation and assist them in understanding the functioning of the WTO.
One of the most prominent and urgent problems in international governance is how the different branches and norms of international law interact and what to do in the event of conflict. With no single 'international legislator' and a multitude of states, international organisations and tribunals making and enforcing the law, the international legal system is decentralised. This leads to a wide variety of international norms, ranging from customary international law and general principles of law, to multilateral and bilateral treaties on trade, the environment, human rights, the law of the sea, etc. Pauwelyn provides a framework on how these different norms interact, focusing on the relationship between the law of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other rules of international law. He also examines the hierarchy of norms within the WTO treaty. His recurring theme is how to marry trade and non-trade rules, or economic and non-economic objectives at the international level.
Any experienced lawyer knows that cases are most often won or lost on procedural grounds; yet procedural issues are often considered too technical for proper treatment in legal literature. In this extensively revised new edition of Palmeter and Mavroidis' authoritative book on WTO dispute settlement, the authors discuss all WTO dispute settlement provisions and their interpretation in WTO jurisprudence. All the decisions of panels and the Appellate Body are discussed, from the inception of the WTO in 1995 until the end of May 2003. Although the book contains considerable technical expertise, it is at the same time written for accessibility to a wide readership. This volume - an essential tool for practitioners, diplomats and government lawyers - is a comprehensive study of compulsory third party adjudication in international law.
"China's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 was hailed as the natural conclusion of a long march that started with the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s. However, China's participation in the WTO since joining has been anything but smooth, and its self-proclaimed "socialist market economy" system has alienated many of its global trading partners - as recent tensions with the United States exemplify. Prevailing diplomatic attitudes tend to focus on two diametrically opposing approaches to dealing with the emerging problems: the first is to demand that China completely overhaul its economic regime; the second is to stay idle and accept that the WTO must accommodate different economic regimes, no matter how idiosyncratic and incompatible. In this book, Mavroidis and Sapir propose a third approach. They point out that, while the WTO (as well as its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT]) has previously managed the accession of socialist countries or of big trading nations, it has never before dealt with a country as large or as powerful as China. Therefore, in order to simultaneously uphold its core principles and accommodate China's unique geopolitical position, the authors argue that the WTO needs to translate some of its implicit legal understanding into explicit treaty language. Focusing on two core complaints - that Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) benefit from unfair trade advantages, and that domestic companies (both private as well as SOEs) impose forced technology transfer on foreign companies as a condition for accessing the Chinese market - they lay out their specific proposals for successful legislative amendment"--.
