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The Creation of the Multilateral Trade Court: Design and ExperientialLearning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2015

MANFRED ELSIG  and
JAPPE ECKHARDT
MANFRED ELSIG*
Affiliation:
World Trade Institute, University of Bern
JAPPE ECKHARDT*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
*
*Email: [email protected]
**Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s disputesettlement system (DSS) in 1995 remains one of the most puzzling outcomes ininternational politics and international law in the 1990s. We provide a newexplanation for this move to law. We argue that important contextual variablesof the negotiations have been largely overlooked by existing explanations,namely ‘experiential learning’. While negotiations tocreate institutions are characterized by uncertainty about distributionaleffects, negotiators will look for clues that moderate uncertainty. In thecontext of the Uruguay Round negotiations, a significant amount of informationwas drawn from actual practice and experience with the existing GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) dispute settlement system. In short,experience gained with judicial institutions and outcomes is important tounderstand the key results of the negotiations: a legalization leap, morespecifically a judicialization of the existing dispute settlement system. Wefocus on the two dominant actors in the negotiations (the United States and the(then) European Community) and provide evidence for our argument based on ananalysis of GATT cases in the 1980s, GATT documents, and in-depth interviewswith negotiators who participated in the negotiations.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Trade Review , Volume 14 , Special Issue S1: Judicial Politics in International TradeRelations , July 2015 , pp. S13 - S32
Copyright
Copyright © Manfred Elsig and Jappe Eckhardt 2015 

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