Talk:Dispute settlement in the World Trade Organization

What is "most adjudicative" supposed to mean?
I caught the blurb in Did You Know on Wikipedia's main page, and I see in the footnote that this is a reference to some textbook, but what is it supposed to mean? The adjective "adjudicative" doesn't normally get used in the superlative forms; generally you would talk about some kind of legal body as being either adjudicative or not adjudicative. For example, an American courtroom would be adjudicative, while a mediation session would not be. But what does it mean for some system to be "more adjudicative" than, for example, an American criminal courtroom? Despite being featured in DYK, I think this quotation should either be removed from the article or given some reasonable elaboration. --Mathew5000 21:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

It was probably meant to say that WTO is the ultimate adjudicative body, but in the translation used "most" incorrectly. 64.81.143.78 21:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know about that. The WTO is the organization as a whole; dispute settlement is just one aspect of what it does. --Mathew5000 22:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought it meant that the process required a great deal of adjudication (something like that the process requires more hearings and decisions than any other dispute resolution process).  howcheng  {chat} 23:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think so. For one thing, there is only one level of appeal: you get a decision from a Panel, then you can appeal to an Appellate Body. Contrast that to something like the American court system where you almost always have at least two possible levels of appeal (the Court of Appeal, then the U.S. Supreme Court), often more. In any event, you wouldn't describe a system as "more adjudicative" just because you have more hearings. --Mathew5000 23:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I think the "did you know?" blurb should be removed.  The continuum of "adjuicativeness," if there is one, is clearly ill-defined.  --Romanempire 03:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, quite a lot of this article appears almost verbatim at World Trade Organization. I know that some degree of duplication is common in Wikipedia between a specific article and an article with a more general scope, but here I am not sure the duplication is necessary. --Mathew5000 01:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * First of all, these are verbatim the words of the previous WTO Secretary, not just of a textbook, talking about the importance of this aspect of WTO. Now, there is some duplication with WTO, but I do not see why this is necessariy a problem. This article includes more details and is more expanded.--Yannismarou 07:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

This is the full paragraph:
 * "The WTO's dispute settlement system has also proved to be a remarkably efficient and effective mechanism for resolving trade disputes between WTO members. It is the ultimate guardian of Member's rights. Between 1995 and 2004, over 300 complaints were filed with the Dispute Settlement Body; this is about the same number of disputes seen by the GATT in all its 47 years. During the WTO's first decade, 95 panel reports were adopted, and the Appellate Body circulated 64 reports. The WTO dispute settlement system is the most active international adjudicative mechanism in the world today. However, it is not the number of disputes but, rather, the credibilit of the system that is most important."

I think the words of the last WTO Director-General before Lamy are important, and shouldn't be removed.--Yannismarou 07:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The passage you quote here does not support the statement that the system is the "most adjudicative mechanism in the world" as DYK reported. --Mathew5000 07:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I am not trying to answer to this argument, but to why this quote shouldn't be removed from the article.--Yannismarou 08:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * He wasn't saying it was the "most adjudicative" (which would be meaningless); he said "most active". And specifically, the most active international adjudicative mechanism. Frankly, issuing 95 decisions in 10 years does not seem all that active to me. It's less than one decision a month on average. However, it is more active than the International Court of Justice and other international tribunals. The paragraph you quoted sounds like hype ("remarkably efficient and effective" etc.). Given that the man was in charge of the WTO during part of the period he is talking about, his viewpoint should not be considered objective and I would question including it in the introduction of the article. --Mathew5000 08:59, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That makes far more sense. To be clear, DYK was not the source of the "most adjudicative" phrase (we require that the fact in the "hook" be mentioned in the article), but it turns out he was misquoted.  howcheng  {chat} 19:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Are there others more active?
The article now says in the introduction that the WTO dispute settlement system is the most active international adjudicative mechanism in the world today. But is that true? What about the European Court of First Instance? It gets hundreds of new cases each year, as compared to the WTO body which got a few hundred cases in one decade. To be fair, the European court allows private individuals and corporations to bring proceedings, as compared to the WTO dispute settlement system which is open to states exclusively. Despite that, I think the European court still has to be called an "international adjudicative mechanism", which means therefore that the introduction of this article is wrong. --Mathew5000 07:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems a bit excessive to me to say that this is wrong. After all, this is what Mr. Panitchpakdi asserts, and, as a matter of fact, the adjudicative work of pannels and of the mechanism as a whole is indeed impressive according to the WTO's site. So, the introduction does not say that "this mechanism is ... ", but that "this person says that ...", and his estimation is indeed recent (of 2006). If you want to contradict it, be my guest, but I wouldn't agree to a removal.--Yannismarou 07:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * What do you mean "excessive"? If the assertion is wrong then it should not be referred to in Wikipedia. --Mathew5000 18:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * What does it mean "wrong"? It is "subjective", but this does not mean that it is necessarily wrong.--Yannismarou 18:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Why do you say it is subjective? He said that it is the most active international adjudicative mechanism. Either it is or it isn't. It seems to me that it isn't, because the European Court of First Instance is more active. (And to answer your question: by "wrong" I mean "untrue". I still don't understand your point.)--Mathew5000 21:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The European Court of First Instance is not an international adjudicative mechanism per say, it is more of a regional one, similar to the European Court of Human Rights or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A more appropriate comparison would be the WTO as to the ICJ, ICC or Tribunals such as ITLOS/UNCLOS. -- Sephui 20:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It is international because it is a court that belongs to more than one country. It is both regional and international. --Mathew5000 10:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You'll find the ECFI described as regional in the same way NATO is. But in all fairness, both are multinational. 90.197.69.153 05:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Zanardi's comment on this article
Dr. Zanardi has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Please note that the statement " A dispute arises when one member country adopts a trade policy..." is incorrect. A dispute arises when a WTO member country initiates a dispute. In other words, a country may be in breach of its WTO commitments without any dispute arising if no harmed country files a dispute.

It would also be good to provide some statistics about the usage of disputes (by WTO member states). These statistics can be easily found on the WTO website (also a link may be sufficient): https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_e.htm or https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_maps_e.htm"

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Zanardi has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Paola Conconi & David De Remer & Georg Kirchsteiger & Lorenzo Trimarchi & Maurizio Zanardi, 2015. "Suspiciously Timed Trade Disputes," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2015-16, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 15:27, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Trump "ended" the DS?
There are new cases after 2019 as summary look at the WTO's page shows, some even involving the US. Sometimes "reliable" sources have titles no better than tabloid headlines. If it's about the stuck appeals appointment mechanism, that process actually started under Obama. And there has been an alternative appeals system agreed by all minus the US. This wiki article is laughably misleading and incomplete. 188.25.29.82 (talk) 22:33, 17 September 2022 (UTC)


 * It's not "ended" but has been paralyzed because the US refused to appoint a judge Someone97816 (talk) 16:53, 28 January 2023 (UTC)