Conflicting Norms in a World of Fragmented International Law and the Role of World Trade Organization: Constitutionalization or Linkage Facilitation?

Abstract

In view of a fragmented international law, World Trade Organization is at the convergence point of most international law corpus and their conflicting norms. As such, WTO and the free trade it tries to protect can have both exasperating and harmonizing effects for these conflicting norms. WTO by simply allowing “exceptions” to some of its rules and “enabling” some other rules, it could facilitate its member States in taking unilateral and multilateral, domestic and international, measures for promoting and protecting human, labor, and environmental rights. Therefore, as stop gap measure, in the existing global governance, WTO can facilitate a short-to-medium-term solution by promoting and protecting non-trade rights, not by constitutionalization, but by external legitimization, through its existing internal procedures, dispute settlement system, and good faith interpretation of its treaties and agreements.