Rethinking the WTO Dispute Settlement System

Dispute settlement at the WTO is in crisis. The Appellate Body (AB), the WTO’s highest adjudicatory body, has been defunct since 2019 because the United States has vetoed the appointment of new members. Its absence has also undermined the first instance panels whose reports can be appealed into the void. As a result, WTO dispute settlement no longer functions as intended. Yet, in 2022 WTO Members committed themselves to re-establishing a “fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system” that is “accessible to all Members” by 2024. The race is now on to rethink WTO dispute settlement.
This conference will convene leading experts from around the globe at the University of Ottawa to discuss new approaches to revitalize the WTO dispute settlement system. Co-organized by Wolfgang Alschner (uOttawa Hyman Soloway Chair in Business and Trade Law), Hélène Ruiz Fabri (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law), and Gabrielle Marceau (University of Geneva), the gathering seeks to support WTO Members’ ambitious target to achieve a dispute settlement reform in the next two years.