The WTO Appellate Body Crisis: Can the Crisis be Cured?

Abstract

The Appellate Body has played a major role in the dispute settlement system at the WTO. The future of it, and as a result, the future of the dispute settlement system remains unknown. That is due to the fact that the USA has been consistently blocking new appointments of the prospective members to the Appellate Body. The USA has been alleging that its strategy consisted in expressing its dissatisfaction with certain alleged irregularities concerning the functioning of the appellate process and the members of the Appellate Body. There has been a lot of discussions on the possibilities to avert the crisis both temporarily, as well as to pursue fundamental changes to the current dispute settlement system in order to address certain concerns that were raised since the beginning of the functioning of the Appellate Body. This paper explores possible scenarios of the cure of the stalemate in the Appellate Body in the WTO dispute settlement system.