Dispute Mechanism of the WTO: Winning Strategies

December 7 - 11, 2009

tuition fee: $1995

Intended Audience: Practitioners from the public and private sectors involved in negotiating and ensuring compliance with regional and international trade agreements.

Course Objectives: This course will focus on the WTO dispute settlement system, which is legally much stronger and more rigorous than its GATT predecessor and on dispute settlement mechanisms in regional trade agreements. Particular attention will be directed at increasing the effectiveness of developing country participation in WTO and regional dispute settlement proceedings.

Course Outline

• Four stages of WTO dispute settlement
  • Consultations
  • Panel Process
  • Appellate Body Review
  • Implementation (Enforcement)
• Crucial procedural and substantive issues that have arisen since the system entered into effect in 1995
• Member proposals to improve the system
• Ways that developing countries can make effective use of the system (including opportunities to obtain legal representation at reduced cost) and difficulties they have experienced
• WTO decisions that have touched upon the relationship between the WTO Agreement and other international treaties, including environmental agreements
• Strengths and weaknesses of retaliation and cross-retaliation in goods, services and intellectual property
• Dispute settlement in regional trade agreements